For both the SLO and Growth Model options, results will be calculated for teachers who teach mathematics, reading, and language usage in grades K-10. Results will also be calculated at the grade level and school level. Districts who participate and provide all the necessary Student Information Repository System (SIRS) data will be provided with both SLO and Growth Model results.
Required Data Files
To receive full results files, your district must authorize NWEA to share MAP Growth assessment data and either upload or approve your Regional Information Center (RIC) to upload SIRS data to Education Analytics secure site. More details about these data and the submission process are included below.
MAP Growth data
NWEA is working with EA to securely share MAP Growth assessment files on behalf of participating districts. In order for NWEA to provide these files, all participating districts must authorize a Data Sharing Agreement (DSA). After approval, NWEA will send EA assessment data for students who have valid Fall and Spring test scores. Since our analysis is based on Fall-to-Spring growth, only students who have valid test events in both of those periods will be included in the results.
Student Information Repository System (SIRS) data
In order to provide districts with growth results, Education Analytics (EA) collects SIRS data from the district, or with district permission, from participating RICs or NYSED, to link students and teachers together rather than NWEA Roster data. Roster data from NWEA is not designed for the purpose of providing consistent and detailed data about student-teacher relationships and would not be viable in the place of SIRS data files. SIRS files provide student demographic data, detailed and consistent course information, student program participation, and student-teacher linkage responsibility. These data come directly from RICs or the districts themselves. Not all RICs provide data for their districts, and some require additional steps from individual districts in order to allow the release of data to EA. If you have questions about whether EA is obtaining your district’s SIRS data through the RIC of if your team needs to provide it directly, contact us at newyorkappr@edanalytics.org.
As of the 2021-22 school year, NYSED had made some changes to the SIRS data file collection. Due to these changes, we plan to collect the following 7 SIRS data files in the following years:
- Course
- Programs Fact
- Staff Snapshot
- Student Lite
- School Entry Exit
- Course Instructor Assignment
- Student Class Entry Exit
Data Processing Rules
Education Analytics met with an Advisory Council of New York stakeholders and technical experts to determine the most appropriate way to calculate SLOs and a growth model in the APPR context. The Advisory Council also determined how to appropriately translate those results to the HEDI scale. Moving forward, NWEA and EA will continue to solicit feedback and direction from the Advisory Council to adjust as needed.
The downloadable document below offers more detail on both SLOs and the Growth Model, as well as the HEDI scale translations and cutoff points.
SLO Eligibility Requirements
Student Eligibility
For a student to be eligible for inclusion in SLO results, the student must:
- Be in Grades K-10
- Have valid fall and spring MAP/MPG test scores
Teacher Eligibility
For a teacher to be eligible for SLO results, the teacher must:
- Teach a course linked in SIRS (Student Information Repository System) data to math or reading, with these State Course Codes (http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/courseCatalog/):
- 4 digits starting with 1 or 2.
- 5 digits with the second digit of 1 or 2.
Teacher-Student Linkage
EA uses SIRS data to determine which students were linked to which teachers (rather than NWEA roster data). For a student to be included in a teacher’s SLO growth result:
- A student must be linked to a teacher on both BEDS day and the day of the student’s spring NWEA test event.
- Note 1: if the student relationship end date is the same as the reporting date or the reporting date is 1 day after the relationship end date, the end date is adjusted to be the end of the year (6/30).
- Note 2: if the relationship start date or end date is blank in the linkage data, we input the standard start and end dates (9/01 and 6/30).
- A teacher’s “Instructional Responsibility Weight" for the student must be greater than 0.
- A student must not be flagged under the “Exclude from Evaluation Indicator.”
For more information on analysis, see SLO
Growth Model Eligibility Requirements
Student Eligibility
For a student to be included in growth model results, the student must…
- Be in Grades K-10
- Have valid fall and spring MAP/MPG test scores
- Have demographic data in SIRS data
Teacher Eligibility
For a teacher to be eligible for growth model results, the teacher must:
- Teach a course linked in SIRS (Student Information Repository System) data to math or reading, with these State Course Codes (http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/courseCatalog/):
- 4 digits starting with 1 or 2
- 5 digits with the second digit of 1 or 2
Teacher-Student Linkage
EA uses SIRS data to determine which students were linked to which teachers (rather than NWEA roster data). For a student to count for a teacher, certain requirements must be met:
- A student must be linked to a teacher between the fall NWEA test event and the spring NWEA test event
- A teacher’s “Instructional Responsibility Weight" for the student must be greater than 0
- A student must be linked to the teacher for at least 2.5% of the student’s instructional time in the content area (student attribution is weighted between teachers)
- A student must not be flagged under the “Exclude from Evaluation Indicator”
A Little More About EA's Growth Model Changes
For student growth attribution, when more than one teacher is linked to a student in a given content area, we proportionally split attribution of value added to multiple teachers based on the amount of time the student had with each teacher. For example, if a student in a math course switches from one teacher to another during the school year, the teacher who had the student for the longer duration of time would be proportionally more responsible for that student’s growth. We also measure the effect of longer or shorter test windows between the fall and spring NWEA test administrations and adjust to compensate.
Our team has historically used the Staff Student Course (SSC) file to link students with teachers. Since the SSC file is no longer being produced as of 2020-21, we plan to use the Course Instructor Assignment (CIA) file in combination with the Student Class Entry Exit (SCEE) file to supplement linkage for grades 3-8 the same way we have been doing it in grades k-2 and 9-10. A major difference in this linkage approach is that the CIA and SCEE files lack instructional responsibility minute-level data. Therefore, EA will use dates instead of minute-level data to proportionally split student attribution in our Growth Model.
For more information on analysis, see Growth Model
Questions?
For more information or specific questions about eligibility, please contact us at newyorkappr@edanalytics.org