- 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
Misconception: If students are already high achieving, it is harder to show growth.
Educators serving students with histories of higher achievement are often concerned that their students' entering achievement level makes it more difficult for them to show growth. However, with PVAAS, educators are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the type of students that they serve. The modeling reflects the philosophy that all students deserve to make appropriate academic growth each year; as such, PVAAS provides reliable and valid measures of growth for students regardless of their achievement level.
PVAAS in Theory
The value-added models used in Pennsylvania are designed to estimate whether a group of students made enough progress to meet the growth standard, which is based on a comparison of the group's average achievement to their average prior achievement.
Furthermore, although Pennsylvania state assessments are designed to discriminate proficiency from non-proficiency, they are also designed to have sufficient stretch to discriminate between Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced performance levels. Accordingly, there is sufficient stretch in the state testing scales to measure the growth of students with histories of higher achievement.
In fact, any test that is used in PVAAS analyses must meet three criteria, and state assessments meet these criteria:
- They demonstrate sufficient stretch so that students with histories of both lower and higher achievement can show growth.
- They are aligned to state curriculum standards.
- The scales are sufficiently reliable from year to year.
PVAAS is fair not only to LEAs/districts, schools, and teachers serving students with a history of higher achievement but it is also fair to the students themselves. The modeling that underlies PVAAS considers the growth of all students, regardless of their entering achievement, and the reporting shows whether the curriculum and instruction is targeted appropriately to these students. Students with a history of higher achievement might require enrichment work in the same way that students with a history of lower achievement might need remediation to make sufficient growth.
PVAAS in Practice
Actual data might be the most readily apparent way to demonstrate that students with histories of higher achievement show similar growth as other achievement groups. The figure below plots the average achievement for the students served by an individual teacher in Pennsylvania against its growth index (the value-added estimate divided by its standard error) for PSSA Mathematics in grade 5 in 2019. Each dot represents one teacher. Regardless of the teacher's student achievement, there is little to no correlation to the growth index. In other words, the dots representing each teacher do not trend up or down as achievement increases; the cluster of dots is fairly even across the achievement spectrum. In the following graph, the actual correlation between the growth index and achievement is 0.15, which is weak. LEA/District and school value-added plots are similar to the teacher one shown below. This shows that students with a history of higher achievement can—and do—show growth through PVAAS, and that educators are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the achievement level of their students.
PENNSYLVANIA GROWTH INDEX VERSUS AVERAGE ACHIEVEMENT BY TEACHER
The next graph plots the percentage of tested students who are considered gifted for a specific teacher's roster in Pennsylvania against the teacher's growth index (the value-added estimate divided by its standard error) for PSSA Mathematics in grade 5 in 2019. Each dot represents one teacher. Regardless of the percentage of the teacher's students who are considered gifted, there is little to no correlation to the growth index. In other words, the dots representing each teacher do not trend up or down as the percentage of gifted students increases; the cluster of dots is fairly even across the entire range. In the following graph, the actual correlation between the growth index and the percentage of gifted students is 0.07, which is negligible. LEA/District and school value-added plots are similar to the teacher plot shown below. This shows that students identified as gifted can—and do—show growth through PVAAS, and that educators are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the percentage of students in their classes identified as gifted.
PENNSYLVANIA GROWTH INDEX VERSUS PERCENT GIFTED BY TEACHER
