English learner projected targets
How one Sioux Falls educator's question led to new EL report
“What if we could look at current EL population and see right away when their first ACCESS test was and its score, how many years are expected to the projected exit date, and other information that is included in the report card?”
Nicole Hansen, who works for the Sioux Falls School District, asked the SD-STARS team this question in January 2019. The question was circulated to other educators who serve on the STARS Advisory Group, and to STARS Certified Trainers. Everyone agreed this data would be useful in a new report. This question expanded into a report request and eventually turned into a new SD-STARS report. The report, AC.025.00-A – English Learner Targets - Projected, brings insight to educators who may have the same question as Hansen. Yutzil Becker, who works with English learner programs at the department, said, “This report is a great way to keep track of your EL student progress, especially for evaluation of program purposes.”
The SD-STARS team caught up with Nicole Hansen to find out how she and others use this report to support the work in her district. Nicole said:
I originally requested this report with the idea of being able to gain EL-specific target information for EL students transferring into districts throughout a school year. This report contains information to help set goals for EL students. The specific goal-setting data cannot be found in Infinite Campus, so if new EL students arrive in a district, this information is lost until the student completes an ACCESS test in the district.
Though that was the report’s original intent, we found it most useful in predicting the EL accountability information. After receiving the 2020 ACCESS score file, we downloaded a file from Infinite Campus containing all of our EL students and then we linked each student to their 2020 ACCESS score. After that, we downloaded the English Learner Targets – Projected file to bring in the target and goal data fields for each student. After combining all three files together, we were able to recalculate the accountability target and goal fields to determine whether each student had met his/her goal. From here, we were able to predict our EL accountability data by determining the percent of students who were:
- Identified, Not Tested
- Returning, Not Tested
- Not Growing
- Growing, Not on Target
- Identified, Exited
- On Target
- Exited Early
We were able to share this information with each building before the school year ended, well ahead of the release of the report card.
This report would be useful for administrators and EL staff to help set EL goals.
The “English Learner Targets – Projected” report has a Data Interpretation Guide (DIG), which is in the SD-STARS Training Center, under the Accountability category of reports. If you have questions about this report or any resources found in SD-STARS, please contact STARSHelp@state.sd.us.