Student Achievement Goals
The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) offers financial support for the planning and startup of public charter schools that demonstrate high potential for significantly improving student achievement in reading/language arts and math as measured by valid and reliable standardized tests. Grant applicants must develop specific metrics and set annual targets for academic student performance, systems for measuring progress against those targets, and strategies for refining instruction to achieve those outcomes.
WFF recommends that schools supplement standardized math and reading/language arts tests with other measures of performance, such as: standardized tests in science, social studies and other subject areas; yearly attendance and retention rates; high school exit standards and graduation rates; college admittance and completion rates, parental satisfaction surveys and school waiting lists. In regard to tracking student academic achievement, schools must plan to evaluate student progress using at least three basic measures:
- Student Achievement Level (Status);
- Student Progress Over Time (Growth); and,
- Comparisons of student achievement status and growth to benchmark schools and national norms.
Student Achievement Level (Status)
WFF expects grant recipients to set specific, rigorous standards of learning for students at all grade levels and to measure the proportion of students meeting and exceeding annual proficiency targets for these standards. Schools should create plans to increase the percentage of students at each grade level and for each subgroup achieving proficiency from year to year. Ideally, a school’s academic programs would enable more than 90% of students within three years to obtain and maintain proficiency against grade-level standards as measured by state criterion-referenced tests.
WFF recognizes that charter schools serving secondary grades often enroll students that are performing years below grade level proficiency targets. In these cases, students need an intensive academic experience to prepare them for postsecondary educational options. Secondary schools seeking WFF support should set performance targets relative to end-of-course and state high school exit exams (as applicable) and for college-entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT.
Student Progress Over Time (Growth)
WFF expects that school grantees are able to demonstrate that an increasing percentage of students across all grades and subjects are improving over time. Schools are expected to demonstrate that students below proficient are moving to higher performance levels and that students who are already scoring proficient or advanced are maintaining or improving their rates of growth.
Schools are expected to measure growth annually on state achievement tests and supplement, where appropriate, student progress measures with results from formative assessments that measure interim progress against annual targets. It is expected that school and cohort growth measures would factor in student mobility and turnover rates.
Comparisons of Student Achievement to Benchmark Schools and National Norms
WFF-supported schools, at a minimum, should strive to achieve test scores and proficiency rankings that are superior to neighboring and/or demographically similar schools. Schools should have plans that will enable students enrolled for two or more years to demonstrate superior performance in student achievement status and growth. High performing schools will achieve performance results that exceed not only demographically similar schools but also national or international norms.