SUNY Regression Analysis for RFP Bonus

12/2/11

SUNY has today issued in DRAFT a New York State Charter School Stimulus Fund Grants RFP seeking applicants for facility financing or start-up/implementation grants.

Those applying for facilities grants are eligible for a 3 pt bonus as described on page 23 of the RFP if they can demonstrate strong student achievement results in one of four ways. Option ii. reads as follows:

2. If a school has provided instruction in grades 3-8 and has generated State assessment data in English language arts and mathematics, the school must have performed at least as well as expected on the 2010-11 State assessments, when compared to similar State public schools with like percentages of federal Free-Lunch Program eligible students as determined by the Institute’s regression analysis (results posted on the Institute’s website at: www.newyorkcharters.org/regression.htm).

              To check for Bonus eligibility, option ii, click to download:

             "NYS Charter Schools with a Positive Effect Size"

About SUNY's Regression Analysis:

One of the required measures in all SUNY authorized charter school academic accountability plans is a comparative measure to evaluate how a school performs in comparison to like schools, those that serve similar percentages of students qualifying for free lunch. The measure is applied to performance on the state assessment in mathematics and English language arts.

In order to determine if schools are meeting this measure, the Charter Schools Institute conducts a regression analysis which yields a predicted percent of students scoring at Levels 3 & 4 based on the grade-specific test performance and free-lunch statistics of each New York State public school. The difference between the school's actual and expected performance in each grade, relative to other schools with similar free-lunch statistics is used to produce an Effect Size. To meet the measure in its Accountability Plan, a school's result must show a meaningful Effect Size, defined as 0.3 or greater, which means a higher than expected level of performance at least to a small degree. 

For the purposes of the New York State Charter School Stimulus Fund Grants RFP, a positive Effect Size, defined as 0.0 or greater would demonstrate the necessary academic achievement as described in option ii. above, i.e., the school performed as expected or better when compared to like schools.

The link below brings you to a table showing all New York State charter schools with a positive Effect Size in both ELA and mathematics.  Further, the table does also include the most recent accounting available to the Institute as to whether or not a school has received previous grants of $350K or a grant in November 2011; making them ineligible to apply under this RFP.