Assessment Data Reference#
Everything this application reports comes from the research files California publishes for the two statewide assessment programs:
CAASPP — the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, covering Smarter Balanced English language arts/literacy and mathematics, the California Science Test, the California Spanish Assessment, and the alternate assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.
ELPAC — the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California, taken by students whose primary language is other than English.
A third publication, the California School Dashboard, sits on top of both.
It is what caschooldashboard.org shows: not what students scored, but how
the state judged a school, across seven indicators — five of which have no
assessment source at all. See California School Dashboard. It has a second half,
Local Indicators, where local educational agencies assess themselves
against the state’s funding priorities and report to their own boards.
Both assessment programs are reported publicly at caaspp-elpac.ets.org, with the ELPAC on its own companion site, and both publish the same figures as downloadable research files. This section documents what those files contain, what the numbers mean, and how they map onto this application’s database.
The data
- Assessments
- Research Files
- Record Layouts
- Student Groups
- Grades
- Achievement Levels
SB_ACHIEVEMENT_4— Smarter Balanced achievement levelsAREA_3— Reporting category bandsCAA_3— California Alternate Assessment levelsCSA_RANGE_3— California Spanish Assessment score rangesCSA_LEVEL_3— California Spanish Assessment levelsCSA_BAND_3— California Spanish Assessment domain bandsELPAC_OVERALL_4— Summative ELPAC performance levelsELPAC_DOMAIN_3— Summative ELPAC domain levelsELPAC_INITIAL_3— Initial ELPAC performance levelsELPAC_INITIAL_COMPOSITE_3— Initial ELPAC composite levelsALT_ELPAC_3— Alternate ELPAC performance levels
- California School Dashboard
- Local Indicators
Using the data