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<p>If you&#8217;re looking for standardized test results, they are still available on the state&#8217;s newly launched &#8220;Future Ready Index.&#8221;</p><p>But they hardly jump out. In fact, the index &#8212; replacing the single-score &#8220;School Performance Profile,&#8221; which in turn replaced the old &#8220;Adequate Yearly Progress&#8221; mandate for ever-rising scores &#8212; was clearly crafted to de-emphasize standardized tests. </p><p>&#8220;Assessments are still highly relevant,&#8221; Matt Stem from the state Department of Education said in a teleconference unveiling the new system. &#8220;But we heard from chambers of commerce, workforce development offices, and industry partners who say that there is a lot of data to see how students progress on graduation.&#8221;</p><p>So if you go to futurereadypa.org and click on a school, the first things you see are not test numbers. Instead, there are three broad categories: &#8220;state assessment measures,&#8221; &#8220;on-track measures&#8221; and &#8220;college and career measures.&#8221; None of them offer a single number. But each has two to four data categories, with the school ranked by color: Blue is best, green is good, red is bad. There are even arrows in some colors to show, at a glance, if the school is improving in that category.</p><p>The goal, Stem said, is to let a community &#8212; school officials, parents, business leaders and other stakeholders &#8212; figure out what matters most to them. If the consensus is that college and career preparedness is more important than results on standardized tests, you may look for schools with a lot of blue under &#8220;percent career standards benchmark&#8221; and &#8220;percent four-year cohort graduation.&#8221;</p><p>Meanwhile, red under &#8220;percent proficient/advanced in English Language Arts (ELA)/literature&#8221; tests results may carry less weight for some, more for others.</p><p>Of course, people still want a quick measure of how their school is doing, and in that regard Stem boiled it down. &#8220;In very simple terms, at first glance at a school page, you want to see a lot of green and blue. If you are seeing a lot of red, those should be areas stirring conversations.&#8221;</p><p><strong>&#8216;Not just report card&#8217;</strong></p><p>Because the colors go well beyond test scores, it can make a big difference.</p><p>In Luzerne County, if you look only at the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced in ELA, math and science tests, the usual suspects are on top: schools from the Dallas and Crestwood districts. Look at the total of blue and green results on the multiple measurements (done for this article using the state&#8217;s available spreadsheets), and those schools slide down the chart.</p><p>The school with the most blue and green rankings: Wyoming Valley West&#8217;s State Street Elementary. That is followed by Wilkes-Barre Area&#8217;s Kistler and Flood elementaries.</p><p>Another example: Locally, the highest scoring high school in math/algebra (the new system combines elementary results with the high school Keystone exams) was Dallas Senior High, with 76.1 percent scoring proficient or advanced.</p><p>By comparison, Wilkes-Barre Area&#8217;s Meyers High School posted a paltry 19.1 percent. Yet Meyers had the most blue and green rankings among county high schools at 31. Dallas had 24, putting it not only below Meyers, but also below Wilkes-Barre Area&#8217;s Coughlin (29) and GAR Memorial (28).</p><p>The new Future Ready index is complicated, and parsing out all the differences between schools can be difficult because so much data is available. But even a casual review of the data for those four high schools shows a big difference: The Wilkes-Barre Area schools have much larger minority populations than Dallas, and the state ranks data for each subgroup as well as for all students. Dallas has no color ranking for most minority populations while the other three do.</p><p>&#8220;There are really significant flaws in single sum scores,&#8221; Stem said. &#8220;They often mask what&#8217;s happening with subgroup populations.&#8221;</p><p>The website is set up to allow a visitor to start at a broad level and drill down to more and more details. It&#8217;s also designed to let anyone with computer access compare schools in several ways. With a little effort, you can pull up a list of schools statewide that share specific data.</p><p>For example, you can create a list of schools with 20 percent to 50 percent black enrollment <em>and</em> 20 percent to 50 percent Hispanic enrollment <em>and</em> 80 percent to 100 percent economically disadvantaged enrollment <em>and</em> 10 percent to 30 percent English Language Learner enrollment <em>and</em> 10 percent to 30 percent students with disabilities enrollment.</p><p>For the record, GAR Memorial is one of only 23 schools statewide &#8212; and the only one locally &#8212; that fit all those criteria.</p><p>The goal of such a refined online comparison system is to make the Future Ready site a dynamic research option.</p><p>&#8220;If I&#8217;m the principal of a rural school of 250 students and I want to find a little school like mine, I can find it and reach out to a colleague and share best practices,&#8221; Stem said. &#8220;That&#8217;s how we&#8217;re setting it up to be a tool, not just a report card.&#8221;</p><p><strong>After high school</strong></p><p>While the state has gathered some level of post-high school information for years, it has never been particularly accessible to the public in a useful form. The new system attempts to change that, as Stem was happy to point out. At Meyers, for example, 60.8 percent of graduates went on to additional schooling, 16.2 percent enlisted in the military, and 20.8 percent entered the workforce. There are demographic breakdowns for each.</p><p>The new index does not yet have a system for determining which schools may need additional help, though Stem said that is in the works. Both the system it immediately replaces (SPP) and the one before that (AYP) had various actions that could be taken if a school persistently scored poorly. Stem said a subset of data provided in the index will be used to determine two groups of schools: those in need of &#8220;Comprehensive Support and Improvement&#8221; (schools doing poorly overall), and &#8220;Targeted Support and Improvement&#8221; (schools where a subgroup is performing poorly).</p><p>Stem said the system is designed to be robust, flexible and transparent, allowing those looking to improve public schools the ability to see where work is needed, determine what matters to the community, and &#8220;combine efforts in improving outcomes for Pennsylvania students.&#8221;</p><p>Oh, and if you still need to focus on test results, 22 Luzerne County schools scored above the state average of 63.3 percent proficient or advanced in ELA/Literature tests, 17 scored above the state average of 45.8 percent proficient or advanced in math/algebra, and 22 scored above the state average of 64.5 percent proficient or better in science/biology.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

New test scores? Sure, but that’s no longer the state’s focus