The purpose of this project was to build a historical record of schools and districts placed on the SINA list, in accordance with NCLB. Such a record provides a tool to monitor trends in the number of schools and districts not meeting AYP requirements for two or more years. A secondary purpose was to build a timeline of significant events in Iowa’s AYP history, which will establish a context for interpreting the historical trend.

The Iowa Department of Education (IDE) completed a follow-up study examining the relationship between test scores and per pupil expenditures. A previous study completed by the IDE revealed an inverse correlation between district per pupil expenditures and average test scores of 11th grade students. Unlike the earlier study, this follow-up study found no correlation between average district achievement levels and per pupil expenditures.

The question is constantly asked: “What sized district produces the best student achievement?” This Iowa Department of Education study shows there is more to student achievement than the number of students in a district.

Abstract—A norm-referenced growth model using growth percentiles is proposed. A caveat of criterion-referenced growth models are they tend to only capture the growth of students whose achievement are around the cut points. In the proposed model, student growth is explored as current achievement relative to student with identical prior achievement.

This report provides information on the requirements regarding the release of data.