SIRS - p-12 - New York State Education Department

Chapter 1: Accountability in New York State
2006 and 2007 accountability cohort members, the school/district is subject to the participation
criterion but is not subject to the performance criterion for accountability.
Safe Harbor Targets
For accountability groups that include 30 or more students in 2010–11 but did not
include 30 students in 2009–10, the scores of continuously enrolled tested students in that
group in 2008–09 and 2009–10 will be combined to determine the safe harbor and progress
targets. For secondary-schools with accountability groups that include 30 or more 2007
accountability cohort members but did not include 30 or more members in the 2006
accountability cohort, the 2005 and 2006 accountability cohorts will be combined to determine
the safe harbor and progress targets. If, after combining two years of data, the group still does
not have 30 or more students on which to determine qualification for safe harbor based on
science or graduation rate, the school/district or group is given credit for having made safe
harbor if it made its English Language Arts (ELA) or mathematics safe harbor target.
“Backmapping” for Schools with Grades Below Grade 3 Only
NCLB requires that all public schools be included in the State accountability system.
This requirement includes schools that do not serve students in the grades in which State
assessments are administered. A “feeder” school is an elementary school that only serves
students in grades below grade 3 and, therefore, does not administer the NYSTP
assessments. Accountability decisions for feeder schools are based on a procedure known as
“backmapping”. Backmapping is a method by which the grade 3 assessment score of a
student is attributed to the feeder school in which the student was enrolled before entering
grade 3 as well as to the school in which the student took the grade 3 assessment. Schools
that do not have enrollments beyond grade 2 but do have enrollments in any of the following
grade combinations are required to do backmapping: 1, 2, 1–2, K–1, K–2. Schools with
prekindergarten, kindergarten, or prekindergarten to kindergarten only are not required to do
backmapping. Schools serving grade 3 students who come from feeder schools within the
district are required to identify the feeder schools on the students’ grade 3 SIRS records only
when the students were continuously enrolled in the highest grade served by the feeder
schools. For example, a school must identify the feeder school for a grade 3 student who was
enrolled in a K–2 school from BEDS day until the end of the school year in which they exited
the building. The performance of this student on the grade 3 assessments in ELA and math will
be part of the determination of whether the feeder school made AYP in these subjects.
If all schools that have a grade 3 in a district that has feeder schools make AYP in the
current academic year, all feeder schools in the district will be considered to have made AYP,
unless the required backmapping data were not submitted. If backmapping data are not
submitted, the feeder school will be judged to have not made AYP, even if every grade 3
school in the district makes AYP. If one or more district schools that have grade 3 fail to make
AYP in ELA or mathematics, the Department will aggregate the third-grade results in that
subject area by feeder school and determine whether each feeder school made AYP in that
subject. The same rules used to determine whether public schools with grades 3 through 8
made AYP will be applied to the performance of feeder schools. The performance of each
accountability group with 30 or more students will be considered in determining whether the
school made AYP. The Department will not, however, hold feeder schools responsible for
having 95 percent of their former students tested in grade 3. If a feeder school fails to make
23 Student Information Repository System Manual for 2010–11 Version 6.2