Rose Tree Media School District
308 North Olive Street
Media, Pennsylvania 19063-2493
Telephone 610.627.6000
Fax 610.891.0959
www.rtmsd.org
Denise C. Kerr, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Angela Gilbert, Ed.D., Director of Elementary Teaching and Learning
Steve Taylor, Ph.D., Director of Secondary Teaching and Learning
What is PVAAS?
PVAAS is an acronym which stands for Pennsylvania Value-Added
Assessment System. This system tracks the progress of students
over time to estimate their growth during a year of schooling. The
results allow school districts to measure the impact of educational
practices, classroom curricula, instructional methods, and
professional development on student achievement.
How is PVAAS different from PSSA?
PVAAS uses PSSA scores from multiple years to measure a
student’s progress, whereas PSSA scores in a single year measure
absolute achievement at one moment in time. To say it another
way, PVAAS compares a student’s performance on PSSA to his/her
own prior performance.
These are complementary but different types of measures: absolute
achievement and progress.
How is a year’s growth defined?
A growth measure represents the minimum amount of progress
schools should expect a group of students to make from grade to
grade in consecutive school years.
It compares students’
performances from year to year within a school or district.
In the results reported on the PVAAS website as Average Gains
Relative to the Growth Standard, a score of “0” would indicate a
year’s growth. Any score greater than zero denotes more than a
year’s growth in a year’s time.
Along the same lines, on the public website, the color green in the
columns for either Average Gain or Average Growth Index indicates
the school or district made more than the expected growth in a year’s
time.
How is it calculated?
Pennsylvania uses a nationally peer reviewed methodology to
calculate students’ progress.
This methodology is based on the conversion of scaled scores to
Normal Curve Equivalents (NCEs), which allow for meaningful
comparisons of scores from year to year. For the purposes of
PVAAS, the baseline year in which the NCE scores were first
established was 2006.
The PVAAS system allows schools to compare individual students’
progress from year to year, but strongly cautions that such “simple”
comparisons “yield results that are confounded by measurement error
and several other issues of concern/quality.” Consequently, PVAAS
reports aggregate scores of groups of students, scores which it
regards as much more valid and reliable.
How does RTM use the data from PVAAS?
Student progress is a major focus in RTM, as reflected in the
Strategic Plan goal to increase the number of students making a
year’s growth in a year’s time. RTM uses the data from PVAAS to
identify specific areas of our curriculum, instruction, and classroom
practice which may need improvement.
What can my child do to prepare for PVAAS?
This question is the same as asking, “What can my child do to
prepare for PSSA,” because PVAAS scores derive from PSSA
testing. Since our curriculum and instructional practices are aligned
with the skills assessed on PSSA tests, putting forth his or her best
effort during all classroom activities and homework provides a student
the greatest chance of success on the test days themselves. Of
course, there are many things parents can do at home to support a
child’s learning, from providing a quiet place to study, to taking an
interest in the child’s learning, to drilling math facts or reviewing
vocabulary flash cards, to reading out loud and encouraging leisure
reading, to ensuring he or she gets a good night’s rest and eats a
healthy breakfast, just to mention a few.
How does RTM’s performance relate to surrounding districts’?
RTM’s performance on the 2010 PVAAS report compares favorably
with those of districts to whom we often compare ourselves, such as
Wallingford-Swarthmore, Garnet Valley, Radnor, Haverford,
Springfield, Marple-Newtown, Lower Merion, Tredyffrin-Easttown, and
Unionville-Chadds Ford. The public can look at the performances of
all the schools in the state via the PVAAS public portal.