In fall 2018, PDE introduced the Future Ready PA Index - a new, public facing, one-stop location for comprehensive information and data on student and school success.
- Pennsylvanians wanted a more holistic tool for evaluating schools. In 2015, Governor Wolf charged the Department of Education with developing a new school measurement tool that would include a broader set of meaningful indicators. Over three years, PDE leaders met with thousands of educators, parents, advocates, policymakers, and business leaders to determine what that new tool should look like.
- The Future Ready PA Index recognizes that students – and the schools that serve them – are more than just results on standardized tests. It features a collection of indicators that illustrate academic proficiency, on-track progress, and college and career readiness – helping to demonstrate how schools are doing in preparing students for post secondary success.
- The Future Ready PA Index’s dashboard approach heightens transparency around school and student performance by including data on achievement and growth by student group, including economically disadvantaged students, English Learners, students receiving special education services, and racial and ethnic groups.
- The Future Ready dashboard is easy to navigate - searchable by district, school, career and technical center, or location; and it includes basic information and demographic data for each school. The Future Ready PA Index also features helpful filters and options to compare multiple schools.
Dashboard approach: The Future Ready PA Index will serve as Pennsylvania’s one-stop location for comprehensive information about school success, and will use a dashboard model to highlight how schools are performing and making progress on multiple indicators.The dashboard approach to school reporting:
- Increases emphasis on student growth measures, which incentivizes a focus on all learners and is less sensitive to demographic variables.
- Measures English language acquisition among ELL students, not simply performance on a test of grade level ELA standards.
- Incentivizes career awareness instruction beginning at the elementary level.
- Addresses the issue of unequal weighting of content areas in the current SPP.
- Provides indicators of student success after graduation.
- Increases the emphasis on student access to course offerings such as AP, IB, college credit, and CTE programs of study..
- Allows LEAs to include locally-selected reading assessments (Grade 3) and math assessments (Grade 7) as additional snapshots of student progress.
- Incentivizes schools to offer career pathways that culminate with high value, industry recognized credentials.
For more information visit PDE’s website on the Future Ready PA Index, Click Here.
For access to Future Ready PA Index measures on all Pennsylvania schools Click Here.
