New online tool monitors students’ progress

A new online tool launched Tuesday allows easy tracking of how Hawaii’s public school students are faring on various measures that are in the state’s strategic plan for education.

The new online resource, unveiled to Board of Education members Tuesday, will let administrators, educators and the public monitor progress toward 10 “student success” objectives in the 2017-2020 strategic plan.

“The Strategic Plan Dynamic Report is an important tool that provides our schools and the community with easier access to performance data, and transforms it into a visual presentation that’s easy to understand,” Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said.

The student indicators include a wide range, such as chronic absenteeism, third-grade literacy, academic achievement measures, ninth-grade passage rates, college-going graduates, and Career & Technical Education. The plan set targets for each of the measures.

Users can drill down to gauge the performance of groups, such as English language learners or students with disabilities, and compare different geographic complexes of schools. The 2015-16 school year serves as the base line, as measured against the 2016-17 school year and the 2020 target.

Performance data on individual schools is not part of the tool yet, but is already available through the “Find Schools” button at the top of the hawaiipublicschools.org website.

“It is a robust, homegrown, organic system that the department put together,” said Rodney Luke, interim assistant superintendent for strategy, innovation and performance.

On Nov. 21, “staff success” measures will be added, namely the percentage of teacher positions filled and teacher retention rates, as well as “support indicators,” namely the repair and maintenance backlog and a family engagement measure.

“I really am impressed with what you’ve done,” board member Patricia Bergin told Luke and his staff. “I think it’s extraordinary, and to hear that is an in-house thing, I’m even more impressed.”

So far, the statewide data for all students as a whole showed little progress over the past year on most objectives. Chronic absenteeism, for example, was steady at 15 percent, with the goal to bring it down to 9 percent by 2020. The percentage of ninth-graders who moved up to 10th grade on time remained flat at 91 percent.

The worst year-to-year change was a drop in third-grade literacy to 65 percent from 70 percent. Meanwhile science performance gained statewide, moving to 46 percent from 43 percent proficient. More seniors completed concentrations in career and technical education in 2017, at 42 percent, up from 39 percent.

Those data points are statewide, and progress of different groups and complexes can vary widely.

Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, testified that it will take more money to make real progress toward targets, such as the goal of including more special-education students in general-education classes.

“Regarding the inclusion rate indicator, the 51 percent target for the 2020 school year can only be achieved if the state receives and distributes more resources to special education,” Rosenlee said. “Inclusion only works if teachers — both special-education and general-education teachers — are given adequate classroom resources, professional development and planning and preparation time.”

The state has a long way to go on that inclusion rate, which measures the percentage of special-education students who are in general-education classes 80 percent or more of the school day. The statewide average was 37 percent in the 2016-17 school year, unchanged from the previous year.

The online tool is the latest step in an evolution in using data to guide work at schools, said Suzanne Mulcahy, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and student support.

“If you think about our journey over about the last 15 years, our schools have gone from having no data and never talking about the results of state tests,” she said. “It was just an exercise we did.”

Then came the federal law, No Child Left Behind, which focused on test scores, she said. With the Strategic Plan Dynamic Report, educators can take a more holistic look at public education, not just test scores.

“Now we have many more data points specifically tied to our strategic plan and the areas that we want to focus on,” Mulcahy said. “Most of all I am pleased that it is transparent for our entire community.”

To view the data, visit bit.ly/HIDOE-SPDR.