In other words, a school's Outcome Score is the average percentage of all score points on an outcome that a school achieved across all test clusters. Outcome Scores are not directly comparable across grades, content areas, or years because of differences in content and test difficulty. However, they can be compared using information on the relative difficulty of each outcome. Higher outcome averages indicate higher performance, and lower outcome averages indicate lower performance. Content area relative difficulty values from 0 to 100 percent are reported on Outcome Score Reports.
Lower percentages indicate harder outcomes, and higher percentages indicate easier outcomes.
An index of relative difficulty was developed to compare outcome score averages within content areas to one another. Therefore, they can be interpreted in relationship to the underlying score scale and proficiency levels. Algorithmic scoring has increased the number of students who receive at least one score. In 1999, across all grades and content areas, nearly 15,000 scores were computed using algorithmic scoring. This scoring method gives a more accurate reflection of student performance in a school or school system.