Focus Schools

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Focus Schools
Presented by Michigan Department of
Education Webinar Presentation by Joann
Neuroth, Office of Education Improvement and
Innovation (OEII) Venessa Keesler, Bureau of
Assessment and Accountability (BAA)
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Overview of the Session

• What is a Focus School?
• How was our school identified as a Focus School?
  How can I review the data regarding this
  designation?
• What does this mean for our school?
• What supports will be provided to assist with
  this effort?
• What are the next steps?

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What is a Focus School?

• Schools with the largest achievement gaps in
  scale score between the top 30 of students and
  bottom 30 of students within a school
• Focus schools may have high average performance
  overall, but have a significantly large gap,
  suggesting struggles addressing low achieving
  students

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What is the purpose of Focus School designation?

• Identifying Focus Schools is a critical component
  to closing achievement gaps within schools and
  statewide
• Focus schools highlight where changes in teaching
  and learning practices need to be undertaken to
  respond to the learning needs of low-achieving
  students.
• These changes are difficult, and both
  accountability and support need to be
  differentiated.

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How was our school identified as a Focus School?

• Top-to-Bottom list includes a component that
  examines the gap in achievement scores between
  top 30 and bottom 30 of students within a
  school
• Gaps are standardized between all students using
  a common assessment within a school, and then
  averaged for the school
• Gaps are calculated for all subject areas and
  combined

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How were Focus schools identified (continued)?

• Average gap is then standardized and ranked among
  all schools
• 10 with largest gaps are identified as Focus
  Schools

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What data supports the designation?
Z-scores compare schools
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Common concerns about this metric

• Are Focus schools only high-achieving schools?
• Are Focus schools only high socioeconomic status
  schools?
• Is the bottom 30 subgroup in Focus schools
  actually high performing?
• Are schools more likely to be Focus schools if
  they have fill in the blank group kids?

Z-scores compare schools
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Not just high achieving...
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Not just high (or low) socioeconomic...
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Bottom 30 are not high achieving ...
Across all subject areas and grade levels, the
bottom 30 subgroup consistently had average
achievement z-score below zero, and most of them
are between -0.5 and -1.5. (This example E/MS
Reading)
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Not dominated by any one subgroup ...

• Focus schools have higher concentrations of
  subgroups in bottom 30 than other schools

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Pause to frame METRICS questions

• We invite you to e-mail questions to
• Mde-accountability_at_michigan.gov
• We will answer as many as time permits at the end
  of this webinar
• We will post answers to all questions on a Focus
  FAQ blog so that you can browse other districts
  answers as well

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What does this mean for our school(s)?

• Target efforts toward supporting needs of lowest
  achievers in the school (likely through
  strengthening or recalibrating the multi-tiered
  system of support)
• Set-asides for district Title I funding
• No SES required
• Choice and Transportation still required
• District Support for Focus schools required
• Schools cannot receive green status on School
  Report Card or AYP until gaps are minimized

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Requirements and Supports for Focus Schools

• Focus schools engage in professional dialogue
  with district administrators
• Deep diagnostic data analysis
• Differentiated district support for Focus schools
• Revised School and District Improvement Plans
• Title I Statewide System of Support (SSoS)
• District Toolkit
• School-specific Data Wall
• District Resource Survey
• District Improvement Facilitators trained to
  coach district administrators

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Title I Funding for these Supports

• State-funded District Improvement Facilitator
  and uniform data wall
• Set aside 10 of district Title I allocation
• Choice and Transportation (required)
• plus
• Enhanced multi-tiered system of support, or
• Professional learning aligned with building data
• Set aside 10 of building Title I allocation
• Professional learning on multi-tiered system of
  support or scaffolded instruction for lowest
  performers or essential elements for MI-ACCESS
• Weekly, daily teacher collaboration time
• Surveys of enacted curriculum, or
• Culture/climate interventions
• in Year 2 or after, DIF is funded through
  district set-aside

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How does a school EXIT Focus School status?

• Focus schools are designated based on
  year-to-year status of achievement gap relative
  to other schools in the state
• Following the end of four years as a Focus
  school, a school must make AYP, including the
  safe harbor target for the bottom 30 subgroup
• Submit documentation to MDE regarding efforts
  taken to reduce gaps and sustain the reduction of
  gaps over time

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Good Getting Great (GGG) Schools

• GGG designates schools with permanent gaps that
  are being well-addressed
• GGG schools are designated upon submission of
  documentation from facilitated dialogue
• Overall achievement is 75 or above
• Bottom 30 is making rapid progress toward Safe
  Harbor status
• GGG schools are removed from Year 2 and 3 Focus
  lists, even though achievement gap merits
  inclusion

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What are the next steps?

• Develop a plan to address internal and community
  communications regarding the Focus school
  designation
• Ask clarification questions through the FAQ blog
  ... and browse others answers
• Ensure 10 district set-aside and 10 building
  set-aside in consolidated application
• Send Choice/Transportation letters to parents by
  August 21.

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Next steps? (continued)

• Discontinue agreements with SES providers
• Consider ways to check implementation of, and
  strengthen/retarget the schools multi-tiered
  system of support.
• Identify the district administrator who will
  partner with the District Improvement Facilitator
  (DIF) to support the school.
• Meet the DIF in mid-September to plan how to
  engage in deep, data-rich dialogue with schools
  regarding achievement gaps.

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Next steps? (concluded)

• Utilize the District Toolkit strategies to
  examine systemic considerations and possible
  remedies for student achievement gaps.
• Revise both school and district improvement plans
  to reflect new strategies.
• Conduct stakeholder meetings with populations
  represented in the bottom 30
• Participate in the Superintendents Dropout
  Challenge with 10-15 students in bottom 30

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For More Information

• www.mi.gov/focusschools
• Resources Include
• Focus school lookup tool
• FAQ for Focus Schools
• At-a-Glance Overview
• Business Rules for metric calculations
• This Overview Powerpoint
• Summary statistics

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Questions

• Ask now by emailing Mde-accountability_at_michigan.go
  v
• Supports for Focus Schools Fran Lake, Office of
  Educational Improvement and Innovation
• lakef_at_michigan.gov,
• 517-335-2957
• Accountability Designations Bureau of Assessment
  and Accountability, Evaluation Research and
  Accountability Unit
• Mde-accountability_at_michigan.gov,
• 877-560-8378, option 6

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Other common Concerns

• Analyses of the Focus Metric

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Understanding the Bottom 30

• The bottom 30 subgroup is comprised of the
  traditional ESEA subgroups.
• All traditional subgroups are represented.
• Most commonly occurring subgroups in the Bottom
  30
• students with disabilities
• limited English proficient students
• black/African American students
• economically disadvantaged students

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Bottom 30 has ESEA Subgroups
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Focus Schools Overall

• Focus schools have even higher concentrations of
  the subgroups (mentioned previously) in their
  bottom 30 subgroup than non-Focus schools.
• This indicates that the Focus methodology is
• still detecting differences in achievement in
  traditional subgroups
• identifying schools where there are not only
  large achievement gaps in general, but where
  there are also large gaps between demographic
  subgroups
• identifies schools that otherwise may not be
  identified using traditional subgroup methodology

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Non-Focus/Focus Schools by subgroup
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More about the bottom 30 subgroup

• Analyses conducted to determine if the bottom 30
  subgroup consisted solely of any demographic
  subgroup
• To address the question
• Does the bottom 30 solely consist of any one
  subgroup?

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Focus Schools Not only ED Students
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Bottom 30 in Focus Schools More Black Students
than non-Focus schools
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But Focus Schools overallblack students not
overly represented
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SWD Focus Schools
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SWD Priority Schools
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Focus Schools Overall

• Focus schools have even higher concentrations of
  the subgroups (mentioned previously) in their
  bottom 30 subgroup than non-Focus schools.
• This indicates that the Focus methodology is
• - still detecting differences in achievement in
  traditional subgroups
• - identifying schools where there are not only
  large achievement gaps in general, but where
  there are also large gaps between demographic
  subgroups
• -identifies schools that otherwise may not be
  identified using traditional subgroup methodology

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Non-Focus/Focus Schools by subgroup
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Bottom 30 High Performing?

• Is the bottom 30 subgroup in Focus schools
  actually high-performing?
• Is the bottom 30 subgroup in Focus schools
  higher than the top 30 subgroup in non-Focus
  schools?
• Is the top 30 subgroup in focus schools
  higher-performing than non-focus schools?

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Answer No

• Across all subject areas and E/MS and high
  school, the bottom 30 subgroup consistently had
  average achievement z-score below zero, and most
  of them are between -0.5 and -1.5.

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Example E/MS Reading
Top 30
Bottom 30
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Are certain types of schools more likely to be
Focus schools?

• Have not detected any significant patterns yet
• Continuing to analyze the data
• Because metric compares top 30 percent of kids to
  bottom 30 percent of kids in the school, its
  unlikely the gap is being driven exclusively by
  one group or type of kids.

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Is there a relationship between the economic
disadvantage gap and the achievement gap?

• Hypothesis Schools with a range of student
  economic disadvantage are more likely to be Focus
  schools, because the higher income kids are all
  in the top 30 and the low income kids are all in
  the bottom 30
• This would make the metric a proxy for
  socioeconomic gap, not achievement gap

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How does the Focus metric differ from AYP
subgroups?

• Top-to-Bottom list includes the achievement gap
  between top 30 and bottom 30 of students within
  a school.
• Unlike subgroup designations, which are limited
  by size of groups and demographic status only,
  this approach targets ACHIEVEMENT gaps and THEN
  asks the demographic question.
• Methodology detects differences in achievement
  within subgroups between subgroups or with
  small populations.