Equity INDEX

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Methodology:

We arrived at this first version of the Equity Index by looking at a series of data points that represent (1) a school’s environment, (2) staff preparedness, and (3) student demographics.

For each individual variable in these 3 areas, we calculated a simple ranking among all schools. We then averaged a school’s ranking across all variables to arrive at the final “ranking” of schools. We ultimately decided to use this ranking approach instead of utilizing a “z-score analysis” as OUSD did for their Environment Stress Factor rankings in order to reduce the impact of outliers on the overall average. 

 

The index was updated most recently in the summer/fall of 2022, with the most recently available public data.

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Data USED + sources:

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1) School Environment

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• Environmental Stress Factor Rank:

  • Environmental Stress Factor is calculated by OUSD (most recently calculated in 2016-2017) and, because it refers to the school neighborhood, is unlikely to offer dramatic changes year-over-year.

  • We included the pre-calculated Environmental Stress Factor ranking from OUSD which includes variables such as crime levels, food security, and community health factors. All relevant variables can be found using the OUSD rankings. Since this pre-calculated rank is made up of these other variables, its weight is essentially decreased. This makes sense because it does not necessarily refer to the students so we decided to weigh the overall Environmental Stress Factor less than the individual variables that comprise it.

 

2) Staff Preparedness​

• % of Teachers Retained (3-year)

  • We looked at a summative average percentage of teachers returning to the same site after 3 years

  • This is a pre-calculated average and, for most schools, spans 10+ years.  The most recent year included in the data is 2020-21.

• Average Years of Teacher Experience

  • We used average years of teacher experience from Ed-Data.org.  The most recent year of data available is 2018-19.

  • Note: For the 2019 index, we used % of teachers at Salary Step 1-5 as a proxy for teacher experience.  We changed to average years of teacher experience because there was more recent data available for that metric.

3) Student Demographics

 

For each of the demographic fields below, we looked at the average percentage of students across multiple years.  We used the most recent data available from Ed-Data.org.

• % of students with a learning disability (2016-17 and 17-18)

• % of students enrolled in the National Student Lunch Program (2019-20, 20-21, and 21-22)

• % of students classified as English Learners (2019-20, 20-21, and 21-22)

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If you would like to learn more or provide feedback, please reach out to us: equityalliesforousd@gmail.com

 

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