Dashboard Metrics
Advanced Course Enrollment
Background
District Dashboard Metrics
Because of the importance of rigorous coursework to post secondary success and to support district efforts to increase advanced course completion, several districts across the country, including Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas and Oakland, have incorporated into their internal performance management dashboards metrics to monitor advanced course enrollment and performance. In focus group discussions conducted with over 2,600 educators throughout Texas, 95% of those surveyed found advanced course enrollment and performance information useful when reported at the campus level. When reported at the student level, the percent of respondents finding the information useful was notably lower (less than 90%). The implication is that this metric, though still valuable to teachers in preparing their individual students for advanced coursework, may be even more useful to district leaders in developing strategic, district-wide approaches to increasing enrollment and success in advanced courses.
Primary Metric
- Advanced Course Enrollment: percent of students currently enrolled in at least one AP, IB or dual credit (DC) course in the four core subject areas, with comparison to campus goal.
User Interface
Dashboard Example
Figure 1 shows the Advanced Course Enrollment metric as seen on the district dashboard.
Figure 1 TSDS District Advanced Course Enrollment Metric
Status Definition
“Advanced Courses” include AP courses, IB courses, other advanced courses identified by the course level type, and dual enrollment (also known as dual credit courses).
The Status column is the percentage of students that are currently enrolled in an advanced course in the following core subjects:
- ELA
- Mathematics
- Science
- Social Studies
The Status indicator is determined by campus-specific thresholds (campus goals) which are set at the district level. The TSDS default threshold is 60% of eligible students enrolling in advanced courses.
Metric Status Indicator | ||
Metric Name | Metric Status Indicator | Campus Attainment |
Advanced Course Enrollment | Red (Percentage) = if percentage of students is less than the district goal Green (Percentage) = if percentage of students is greater than or equal to the district goal | The number of campuses meeting their campus goal over the number of campuses with data for the metric |
Trends
The dashboards do not currently support trends for this metric. The UI supports the trends, but the ETL packages have not been developed.
Trend Definition
Trend Indicators: Objective is to indicate Advanced Course Enrollment | |||
| Up green | If the value for the current time frame is more than 5 percentage points higher than the prior time frame, then display a gray arrow trending upward. | |
| Unchanged | If the value for the current time frame is less than or equal to 5 percentage points higher or less than or equal to 5 percentage points lower than the prior time frame, then display two gray arrows pointing outward indicating no direction. | |
| Down red | If the value for the current time frame is more than 5 percentage points lower than the prior time frame, then display a gray arrow trending downward. | |
The trend does not show for the first occurrence of a time frame since data is not available.
Delta Definition
The delta appears only in the campus list and displays the individual campus goals rather than the district goal.
Delta Indicators: Objective is to indicate Advance Course Enrollment | |||
Metric Name | Sub-Metric Name | Campus Goal | Delta |
Advanced Course Enrollment | Middle School | Set campus goal | Red (Delta Percentage) = if the calculated percentage of students is less than the campus goal Black (Delta Percentage) = if the calculated percentage of students is greater than or equal to the campus goal |
| High School | Set campus goal | Red (Delta Percentage) = if the calculated percentage of students is less than the campus goal Black (Delta Percentage) = if the calculated percentage of students is greater than or equal to the campus goal | |
Periodicity
Best practice is to load the data for this metric after each semester’s enrollment is determined.
Recommended Load Characteristics | |
Calendar | Beginning of school year and mid-year |
Frequency of data load | Semester, Yearly |
Latency | Year |
Interchange schema | Interchange-StudentEnrollment.xsd |
Tooltips
The standard tooltips for the metric definition, column headers, and help functions display for this metric.
- Green metric status: OK
- Red metric status: LOW
- 'More' indicates drill down views for this metric
is ‘No change from the prior period'
is ‘Getting worse from the prior period’
is 'Getting better from the prior period'
Business Rules
The Advanced Course Enrollment metric is the percentage of students that are currently enrolled in advanced courses in the following core subjects for the current school year in grade levels 6 – 12.
- ELA
- Mathematics
- Science
- Social Studies
“Advanced courses” are those defined as follows:
- PreAP courses
- PreIB courses
- AP courses
- IB courses
- Other advanced courses identified by the state of Texas AEIS accountability definition (see Appendix A)
- Dual enrollment (also known as Dual Credit courses)
Data Assumptions
- State-defined and locally-defined advanced courses in the core subjects are available.
Computed Values
The cohort is the set of currently enrolled students across all grades in the campus. Table 6 shows the calculation for the percentage of students enrolled. The results of the calculation display in the Status column.
| Metric | Calculation |
Percentage | Total of all students currently enrolled in one or more advanced courses in a core subject * 100 / Total number of students currently enrolled. |
Data Anomalies
Anomalies
- Advanced courses coded as Gifted and Talented or Honors only will not be included in this calculation.
- Advanced Placement exam results are often returned after 12th graders have graduated and are no longer enrolled on the campus. These students will not be included in the calculations.
Footnotes
Footnotes are used to provide addition data information concerning the metric. Footnotes are sequential for the entire page. Therefore, a metric's footnote may not begin with the number 1.
Date of Refresh
Best practice is for the date of last data refresh to appear next the metric in the following format:
- (Through Spring Semester 2010)
Implementation Considerations
Advanced Course Definition
Best practice is for developers to ensure that the definition of the exact courses that qualify as “advanced” include AP and IB courses, as well as those defined as advanced by both the state and those locally defined by the district. This mapping looks at the course characteristic type as coded locally. In the case of courses that are both AP and another type such as GT, the course should have the characteristic type of AP. If the other characteristic is recorded, the course will not appear as 'advanced.'
Indicator and Metric Definitions
- In researching best practices across leading districts, access to and completion of a rigorous curriculum was identified as a leading indicator of post-secondary success. With respect to advanced academics one way to definite this metric is the percent of students currently enrolled in at least one AP, IB or dual enrollment (DE) course in the four core subject areas. Other related ways districts measure this indicator include:
- Advanced Academics Completion: percentage of students who are enrolled in an advanced course and complete that course.
- Advanced Academics AP/IB: percent of students who are enrolled in an AP/IB course and are registered to take the AP or IB exam.
- Advanced Academics AP/IB: percent of students enrolled in at least one AP/IB course.
Drill Downs
Drill Down Views
The dashboards include the option to see more detail that is associated with a metric. Table 7 list the drill down views that are recommended for this metric.
| Campus List | List of campuses and whether or not they meet their goal for this metric for the specified period. |