Glossary of Terms

Accountability
A set of rigorous, statewide academic standards, statewide tests of students and school performance, and statewide systems of incentives and interventions tied to academic results in relation to those standards.

Accountability means that all of those in the education system - the child, the teacher, the school, and the district leaders - know what they must produce in the way of results, how they will be measured, and what will happen if they do or do not attain the desired results.

Adequate Yearly Progress
The level of academic progress improvement required of public schools or school districts on the state mandated assessments and/or other indicators as required in the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment and Accountability legislation, which complies with State and Federal law.

Augmented Norm-Referenced Test
An assessment comprised of both norm referenced and criterion referenced items sufficient to provide valid and reliable measures of the level of student performance relative to Arkansas Learning Standards in the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks, which are discipline-based and clearly describe what students must know and be able to do in each academic content area, as well as indications of student performance relative to the student performance of a randomly sampled national comparison.

Criterion-Referenced Test (CRT)
An assessment instrument that is customized around the state's curriculum frameworks. The test items are based on the academic standards in the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks and are developed by a committee of Arkansas teachers, with support from the Arkansas Department of Education and the testing contractor.

Longitudinal Tracking
A system that uses standardized test scores to track the progress of the same student from year to year and from grade to grade, regardless of whether the student moves from one school to another or one district to another. Educators use the system to target students who aren't making appropriate academic gains. Longitudinal Tracking also helps assess a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom, and can provide information for quality professional development.

Norm-Referenced Test (NRT)
A standardized exam based upon a student's broad based exposure to a variety of topics. Examples of norm-referenced tests are Stanford 9 or 10, Terra Nova and the Iowa Basic Skills Test. A norm-referenced test is used to measure student progress/performance with a national sample of students at the same grade level.

Pass Rate
A level of performance in the student assessments determined by the standard-setting process of the Arkansas Department of Education that establishes the level below which students are required to have an Academic Improvement Plan and must participate in remediation.

Performance Levels
The term used to refer to the four levels of student achievement on the state's criterion referenced exams.  The four levels are Advanced, Proficient (Grade Level), Basic and Below Basic.  A description of each level is, as follows:

• Advanced:  Advanced students demonstrate superior performance well beyond proficient grade-level performance.  They can apply established reading, writing and math skills to solve complex problems and complete demanding tasks on their own.  They can make insightful connections between abstract and concrete ideas and provide well-supported explanations and arguments.
• Proficient:  Proficient students demonstrate solid academic performance for the grade tested and are well prepated for the next level of schooling.  They can use established reading, writing and math skills and knowledge to solve problems and complete tasks on their own.  Students can tie ideas together and explain the ways their ideas are connected.
• Basic:  Basic students show substantial skills in reading, writing, and math:  however, they only partially demonstrate the abilities to apply these skills.
• Below Basic:  Below Basic students fail to show sufficient mastery of skills in reading, writing and math to attain the Basic level.

Subgroups
A school must meet Adequate Yearly Progress criteria both overall and for each of the following subgroups that meets the minimum group size as determined by the Arkansas Department of Education and approved by the United States Department of Education:

Value-Added Computation of Student Gains
Statistical analyses of the educational impact of a school's instructional delivery system on individual student learning using a comparison of previous and post achievement gains.