At Bellefonte Area School District we believe that our decisions should be both informed by research and best practices as well as supported by relevant and valid data. Student data is critical in our decision making process. We believe that decisions should never be based on a single data point; multiple measures are critical to our process. Additionally, we believe that the data itself does not provide all the answers, rather it poses questions and challenges us to dig deeper to find the root causes (positive and negative) that affect student learning.
We also believe, that although summative data such as that acquired through our PSSA, Keystone Assessments, and final exams may be a valid set to help us identify patterns and 'flags' at the organizational level, they do not accurately reflect our district's academic reality; it is our classroom data and our formative assessments that best help us tailor learning for our students and provide us the information that enables us to ensure a rigorous and inclusive learning environment.
We've included in this section links to PVAAS data - data that focuses on academic growth rather than achievement. We believe growth is a more informative indicator for our students than achievement.
We've also included, below, documents that pose questions we explore when examining our data. The questions at the district level (in addition to others) are ones that enable us to explore large scale possibilities and identify possible trends, areas of concern, and/or strengths that need to be further examined. Questions at the teacher level enable us to begin to get to root causes and make the changes that most fully affect student learning. In addition to these documents that are uses in conjunction with our student data/work, our data teams also use additional protocols with their instructional coaches, principals, and supervisors to move from data to questions to answers to action plans.
https://pvaas.sas.com/ (Pennsylvania Value Added Assessment System - Academic Growth)
http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=1793618 (Content level questions for looking at data)
http://paschoolperformance.org/29/Schools (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile)
You will also find a sub-page below that shares specific information on the PSSA and Keystone Exams assessment protocols.