In 2003 the final three-year average will be established, which will be compared to the baseline. The purpose of setting targets is to focus your school, including its planning activities, on improving learning. The requirement that your school set targets for improving student performance is meant to provoke you not only to examine the current teaching practices at your school, but also to find ways to improve them. Thus, your school should use state assessment results to define what it should achieve in its improvement process. Setting targets in terms of adequate yearly progress allows your school to monitor its progress and gauge the effectiveness of its efforts.
Schools can use the state assessment results to initiate a process of self-study.
In this process the school improvement team will look at patterns of student learning and use this evidence to build conclusions about the educational practices at your school, including curriculum, instruction, professional development and support services. School improvement teams should not limit themselves to considering evidence provided by state assessments. Since the state assessments will usually provide evidence about only one grade in a school, these other sources of information are important for forming a complete picture of student learning in the school. The more complete this picture is, the more powerful the conclusions will be that are built from this picture. We want to know if this guide is helpful to you.