Understanding Academic Performance Score
The Educator Effectiveness System (Act 82 of 2012) is designed to evaluate principals and teachers. For teachers, the evaluation is based upon classroom observations, teacher specific data, elective data, and building level data. The building level data are used to develop the school academic performance score derived from the Pennsylvania School Performance Profile1. It comprises 15 percent of each teacher and principal’s evaluation beginning with the teacher rating in the 2013-2014 school year and the principal rating in the 2014-2015 school year.
The score for a school is based upon indicators that define a high performing school. Many data elements come together to create the academic score. These elements are categorized into five areas.
The first three areas represent 50 percent of the school academic performance score:
This category represents 40 percent of the school academic performance score:
- Indicators of Academic Achievement - Include PSSA/Keystone performance, industry standards based competency assessments, grade three reading proficiency, and SAT/ACT college ready benchmarks.
- Indicators of Closing the Achievement Gap - All student scores are used to define how well a school is making progress toward proficiency of all students.
- Indicators of Closing the Achievement Gap - Historically Underperforming Students’ scores are used to define how well a school is making progress toward proficiency.
This category represents 10 percent of the school academic performance score:
- Indicators of Academic Growth/PVAAS - Measures the school’s impact on the academic progress of groups of students from year-to-year.
Schools may earn up to 7 additional points via Extra Credit for Advanced Achievement based upon advanced performance on state and industry assessments, as well as for students earning a 3 or higher on an Advanced Placement exam.
- Other Academic Indicators - Assesses factors that contribute to student achievement (e.g., graduation rate, promotion rate, attendance rate).
1 Data are displayed for each element if there are 11 or more students represented. This includes all the performance measures used to determine the academic performance score.