- Using PVAAS for a Purpose
- Key Concepts
- PEERS
- About PEERS
- Understanding the PEERS pages
- Evaluation List
- Evaluation Summary
- Evaluation Forms
- Add Educator
- Add Evaluator
- Manage Access
- Add a school-level Educator to PEERS
- Add a district-level Educator to PEERS
- Add the Evaluator permission to a user's account
- Remove the Evaluator permission from a district user's account
- Add the Evaluator or Administrative Evaluator permission to a district user's account
- Remove the Administrative Evaluator permission from a district user's account
- Remove an Educator from PEERS
- Restore a removed Educator
- Assign an Educator to a district-level Evaluator
- Assign an Educator to an Evaluator
- Unassign an Educator from an Evaluator
- Assign an Educator to a school
- Unassign an Educator from a school
- Link a PVAAS account to an Educator
- Working with Evaluations
- Switch between Educator and Evaluator
- View an evaluation
- Use filters to display only certain evaluations
- Print the Summary section of an evaluation
- Understanding evaluation statuses
- Determine whether other evaluators have access to an evaluation
- Lock or unlock an evaluation
- Save your changes
- Mark an evaluation as Ready for Conference
- Release one or more evaluations
- Download data from released evaluations to XLSX
- Make changes to an evaluation marked Ready for Conference
- Reports
- School Reports
- LEA/District Reports
- Teacher Reports
- Student Reports
- Comparison Reports
- Human Capital Retention Dashboard
- Roster Verification (RV)
- Getting Started
- All Actions by Role
- All Actions for Teachers
- All Actions for School Administrators or Roster Approvers
- Manage teachers' access to RV
- Assign other school users the Roster Approver permission
- View a teacher's rosters
- Take control of a teacher's rosters
- Add and remove rosters for a teacher
- Copy a roster
- Apply a percentage of instructional time to every student on a roster
- Batch print overclaimed and underclaimed students
- Remove students from a roster
- Add a student to a roster
- Return a teacher's rosters to the teacher
- Approve a teacher's rosters
- Submit your school's rosters to the district
- All Actions for district admin or district roster approvers
- Assign other LEA/district users the Roster Approver permission
- Take control of a school's rosters
- View a teacher's rosters
- View the history of a teacher's rosters
- Edit a teacher's rosters
- Add and remove rosters for a teacher
- Copy a roster
- Apply a percentage of instructional time to every student on a roster
- Batch print overclaimed and underclaimed students
- Return a school's rosters to the school
- Approve rosters that you have verified
- Submit your district's rosters
- Understanding the RV Pages
- Viewing the History of Actions on Rosters
- Additional Resources
- Admin Help
- General Help
Scatterplots
Building a Scatterplot
When you select Scatterplots from the Reports menu, you will be prompted to choose:
- Test and subject
- Grade, if applicable
- Year of data
When plotting assessments analyzed with the growth standard methodology, select Across Grades to see combined measures across all grades for each LEA/district and school you include on the graph.
Before the public PVAAS reporting is released, you are only able to add LEAs/districts and schools whose reporting you are authorized to see in your account permissions. After the public reporting is released, you will be able to plot schools based on the public data. At that time, if you choose a single grade, you will still only be able to select LEAs/districts and schools whose reporting you are authorized to view. If you choose Across Grades, you will be able to select all LEAs/districts and schools in Pennsylvania.
Choose the Axes
Once you've made these selections, an empty scatterplot is displayed. By default, Achievement vs. Growth is selected. To change the x and y axes, choose from the drop-down menu above the graph. If you choose a predefined graph, a short paragraph of interpretation is displayed. You can also create a custom scatterplot. To do so, open the drop-down menu and choose Custom Axis Selections. Two new drop-down menus appear. The one on the left sets the variable for the x axis, and the one on the right sets the variable for the y axis. |
Average Growth Index: The AGI indicates how strong the evidence is that the group of students in the LEA/district or school exceeded, met, or did not meet the growth standard in the selected subject. The AGI is calculated by dividing the growth measure by its standard error. Because the AGI takes the standard error into account, it is a fair way to compare LEAs/Districts and Schools.
| If the AGI is | Students, on average, made the following type of progress |
|---|---|
Equal to or near 0 | Progress similar to the growth standard |
Greater than 0 | More progress than the growth standard |
Less than 0 | Less progress than the growth standard |
Growth Measure: This value is the growth measure from the LEA/district or school value-added report for the selected grade and subject or Keystone content area.
Achievement: This value represents the achievement of students in the LEA/district or school in the currently selected year, subject, or Keystone content area. For assessments analyzed with the growth standard methodology, achievement is the average of the scores from the most recent prior year available and the current year for students in the district, school, or teacher's class. It is expressed in reference group NCEs. For assessments analyzed with the predictive methodology, the predicted score is the average of the predicted score for students in the LEA/district or school, expressed in scale scores.
% Proficient or Advanced: This value represents the percentage of students who performed at a Proficient or Advanced level on the selected state assessment. For Keystone exams, the percentages you see here follow the business rules established by Pennsylvania for which scores to include. For example, a student who is only proficient based on their "super score" is not considered proficient.
Demographic Options: The percentages represent the proportion of students tested in the selected grades who are identified as belonging to that demographic category.
Select Items to Display
Choosing LEA/Districts and Schools
Next you'll need to choose the LEA/districts or schools you'd like to plot on the graph. To do so, you'll work below the graph in the Select Items to Display tab.
Plot: Use this drop-down menu to choose LEA/districts or schools. If you choose LEAs/districts, each LEA/district you select will appear as a data point on the graph above. If you choose schools, each school you select will appear as a data point on the graph.
Group by: Use this drop-down menu to control how the list of available LEA/districts or schools is ordered. You can order the list by LEA/district, IU, or county.
To add all schools or LEAs/districts to the graph, click Add All. To plot individual LEAs/districts, select to plot LEAs/districts, and click on the appropriate name in the list. To plot individual schools, select to plot schools, and click the plus sign next to an LEA/district's name to expand the list of schools in that LEA/district. Select the names of the schools you want to include. If you want to include all the schools in the LEA/district, click on the LEA/district's name.
Roll the cursor over the name of a currently selected LEA/district or school to locate it.
Filtering by Demographics
Once you have selected LEA/districts or schools, you can limit which ones appear by applying demographic filters listed on the right side of the screen. To apply a filter, check the box next to it and enter a range of values. Then click Apply Filters. Only LEA/districts or schools that fall within the range you defined for the selected demographic appear. For example, if you choose % Tested Economically Disadvantaged and enter a range of 70% to 100%, only LEA/districts or schools that have 70-100% of their students identified as economically disadvantaged are displayed.
You can apply any combination of filters you'd like. To remove a filter, uncheck the box. To remove all filters, click Clear Filters.
On This Graph
This tab lists the LEA/districts or schools you have added to the scatterplot. The number of LEA/districts or schools currently selected appears in parentheses after the tab's name. The list displays the values for each LEA/district or school for the variables you've chosen to plot. To see the values for the schools currently plotted displayed, expand the list by selecting the LEA/district's name. Roll the cursor over the name of a currently selected LEA/district or school to locate it on the scatterplot.
To change the symbol for any LEA/district or school, click the symbol in the Point column. You can change the symbol's size, color, or shape. If you choose Apply to School, your changes will be applied only to the symbol for that one school in the graph. If you choose Apply to LEA/District, your changes will be applied to all schools in the LEA/district.
Settings
Font Size: Controls the size of the text on the axes and rollovers.
Animations: If you experience performance issues, it can be helpful to turn off the animations.
Rollovers: When enabled, the scatterplot displays the name of each LEA/district or school when the cursor moves over the data points. If you do not want to see these rollovers, disable this feature.
Graph Line Depth: This setting controls whether the lines appear above or below the data points.
Graph Lines: The lines mark the origin for the data on each axis. To turn off a graph line, uncheck the box. To change the color of the line, click the dash next to the origin label. In the drop-down menu, select a color, and then click Apply.
Additional Graph Options
Just below the scatterplot, you'll see additional options for displaying the data and interacting with the graph.
Zoom: When this option is selected, you can click and drag the cursor over a portion of the graph or double-click on the graph to zoom in.
Move: Once you have zoomed in, you can click and drag to view sections outside the visible area.
Flip: Click this option to switch the x- and y-axis.
Fullscreen: Click this option to enlarge the graph to fill your browser window.
Restore: This button appears after you have chosen at least one of the graph options. Click Restore to return the graph to its default settings.