INOVA
Formerly known of as Campus TAKS, this product was recently renamed the INOVA Process to better reflect its character. The INOVA Process is designed to increase your school’s TAKS scores, improve your ability to match appropriate interventions with students’ needs and enhance your long-term instructional effectiveness. Ultimately, it’s designed to build your staff’s confidence in their ability to positively respond to any test system placed in their path. Built on a foundation of fifteen years of site based experience in responding to accountability systems in two states (Texas and California), the INOVA Process has proved itself to be one of the most successful systems for raising accountability ratings. The Process starts by presenting you with a completed comprehensive disaggregation of your TAKS test results not only for this past year but also longitudinally. The disaggregation includes critical proprietary information analysis that yields “perspectives” into your data that are not available through any other source. These powerful analytical tools are delivered to your school complete and ready to use. The breadth of this product ranges from individual student profiles by subject area to grouped analyses by campus and district. Embedded in this system is also a unique analysis coined “tail-left” that precisely targets scenarios of rapid potential gains among your student population. The Process also leads to what we term “scenario analysis” which facilitates your staff’s ability to match student needs to interventions and then evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions. The materials are tied to a detailed step-by-step approach that turns them from mere data into a powerful motivational device for creating positive changes in your school’s response plan to the current or any future test measures your school will face. Here are just a few examples of what you’ll be able to do immediately upon receipt of your INOVA Process materials:
· Individual Student Profiles are generated on each student for which the district has a valid test record. These profiles allow staff to 1) Target specific students by the level of intervention required to not only meet but exceed the school’s TAKS and A YP goals, 2) Target specific objectives requiring intervention by specific individual needs, and 3) Identify “patterns” of test performance , by student, later to be tied to “scenario” analysis (discerning sets of students that fall into the same basic performance trends)
· “Strike Zone” analysis by student. Each student record is analyzed to determine the specific objectives which would yield the highest potential gain for that particular student. These are the areas where the student could progress the fastest—not only improving test performance but more importantly improving the student’s belief in his abilities (self esteem and psychological persistence)
· “Aberrant analysis” is conducted by student. This is designed to identify students whose performance is not inline with the schools’. This is accomplished by first analyzing how each individual school did on ALL the tested objectives and then based on that level of school performance identifying which students scored aberrant to the school. The value of this analysis is that it can readily identify students who did not master an objective even though the majority of the students in the school did. This “flags” students whose instruction must be modified in the future---Even though the school taught the concept effectively (i.e., the majority of the students in the school got it right) this student did far below his peers.
• A new section called “Interpretive Analysis” does exactly that---it interprets the residuals (the basis of Tail-left), sets concern levels, and signals general scenario response strategies.
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You will be able to readily identify students with the highest potential for immediate increases in scores and those requiring more long-term interventions (also those poised for commended performance). This takes two forms: 1) one is in a proprietary analysis termed “tail left” that identifies students that underperformed or outperformed (conducted by student and illustrated on the profiles) and 2) aggregate listings of students that fall into one of twenty-five performance “scenarios”. The staff is taught the importance of scenario analysis and how its results can guide future instruction.
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As mentioned above, profiles are tied to your school’s “Scenario Responses” (the Process helps you begin developing approaches to these). More importantly your school learns which 6 of the 25 possible scenarios are pivotal to beating the TAKS and which 3 additional scenarios are the keys to beating the AYP. By targeting these 9 pivotal “scenarios”, your school enhances its mathematical probability of beating both TAKS and the AYP.
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Your INOVA Process “kit” also includes: 1) a set of critical listings (students by scenario, Super-green list---students that could hit Commended Performance, Color code lists, Potential Gain Report---which students exactly can bring the school the most rapid improvement in performance and where the school stands on tail-left/tail-right distribution), 2) transparencies of how many greens, blues, grays, yellows and reds they have (to help in their discussions with staff) and 3) student labels to build mentoring packets.
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Through the “productivity analysis” component your staff will learn to identify strengths and weaknesses in their school’s instructional interventions – enabling them to begin building a plan of systemic change in their instructional response system. Staff is briefly trained on using the enclosed CD (containing an EXCEL file of the profile data) to do “productivity analysis”. More extensive training in this area can be purchased at the district’s discretion. In this regard, the INOVA Process also helps identify programs that get you the results you want and those that don’t.
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As mentioned above, a data CD is also enclosed in your materials kit that contains: 1) an EXCEL data file of all the information illustrated in the profiles (so that your staff can create their own lists and queries) and add variables---This file also allows schools (with the internal capacity) to do what we previously called “productivity analysis” and 2) PDFs of all the profiles on a CD so that you always have a complete copy of all the profiles and lists we provided you (this makes it easier to work with the data---lose a sheet---no problem, just print another from the CD).
· Use the INOVA Process to directly motivate positive actions – The Process is designed to elicit precise attitudinal and behavioral shifts in your staff that lead to increased student achievement. Many of the illustrations of “data” included in the materials you’ll receive are designed to enhance your presentations to staff on student needs and the actions required to achieve your TAKS and A YP goals.
