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This tutorial has been created to help you understand how to read and interpret your AYP mathematics graph. This graph is not data from your school but is 2007 data from a K-5 elementary school.
This graph shows the mathematics performance of all students who took MSA or Alt-MSA as well as the performance of each subgroup on the 2007 assessment.
The blue dotted line represents the 2007 AMO or Annual Measurable Objective for a K-5 elementary school on the mathematics assessment. The state has set an annual measurable objective for each grade assessed on MSA or alt-MSA. However, each school's AMO is an aggregate of the grade level AMOs for each assessed grade in that school.
In compliance with NCLB, the AMO target increases each year toward the goal of 100% in 2014. So your school’s AMO this year will be different than the AMO shown in this tutorial. When you look at your school’s AYP graphs, you will see the current AMO for your school.
The bars represent the percent of students (all students and the 8 subgroups) who performed at the proficient level. Only the AYP eligible students are counted in this percentage. The color of the bars indicates whether a school met the AMO target --- green bars indicate that the school "met" the AMO target and yellow bars indicate the school did not meet the target. If you have a green striped bar that indicates that the school or district met AYP through the Safe Harbor provision.
The black lines perpendicular to the blue AMO line are called confidence intervals. They look like capital I's to many people. The confidence intervals are based on a statistical test used to answer the question, "Is the school's performance significantly below the AYP target?" Because the accuracy of scores depends on the number of students in each group, the state uses a statistical test to help ensure they make fair and valid AYP decisions for groups with different numbers of students. Consequently, if the bar is below the black confidence interval, then the performance of that group is significantly less than the target.
You can see that the school whose data is graphed here met the AYP target for all students, Asian, White, Hispanic, FARMs students. The school did not meet the AYP target for African American and Special Education students. We can also see that they have fewer than 5 American Indian and LEP students because there are no bars for those two groups. In the table below the graph, you will be able to see the percent of students who performed at the proficient level and the numbers of students who performed at the proficient level next to the total number of test takers in that group.
You will also see the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval. You are only interested in the lower bound and whether your bar hits or overlaps that bottom bound. In this graph, you can see that the special education subgroup bar is very close to the lower bound of the confidence interval. Because the bar is yellow, you know that the AYP target was not met. However, you will want to see the exact point of the lower bound to see how close you were to meeting the target.
Reading your AYP Mathematics Data
