The State Department of Education on Wednesday released another list of schools identified for recognition and support under Idaho’s new accountability plan.

SDE officials identified 247 schools for targeted support and intervention because of academic achievement gaps. At the same time, SDE leaders recognized top-performing schools for students taking advanced math classes and performance on the spring Idaho Reading Indicator test.

The 247 targeted support and intervention schools made the list because at least one subgroup of students — such as economically disadvantaged students — consistently underperformed their peers. The state’s criteria defines consistent underperformance among a student subgroup as three consecutive years of a performance gap of 35 percent on a given academic indicator.

The schools identified for targeted support and intervention must now:

• Work with principals and school leaders to develop an improvement plan that includes a comprehensive needs assessment.
• Identify interventions to be used.
• Submit the plan to the district for approval and monitoring.

“Today, we continue to celebrate bright spots in student performance across the state,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra said in a written statement. “We also flagged for district attention schools where subgroups of students have shown performance gaps for three consecutive years.  As we review the gaps identified, the most common groups are those with students who face a significant disadvantage that impacts their learning, including those with disabilities and those learning English. This information aids the dialogue underway about what state support is necessary for educators working with our highest-needs students.”

The list of 247 schools is available to download on the SDE’s website, but it is imbedded within a pivot table that requires users to manipulate, expand and collapse rows of data within each district’s data cell. For example, clicking to expand the Boise School District’s data cell unveils new rows of data listing all Boise schools. Users must then click each school’s data cell to pull up rows of student subgroup data and then find out whether or not there are performance gaps within a number of different academic indicators.

To download the list, visit the SDE’s accountability website, then click on the “2018 TSI measure summary” header to download the pivot table.

Wednesday’s list follows on the heels of lists of lowest- and highest-performing schools that the SDE released last month.

In December, the SDE plans to release revamped report cards for all public schools that is expected to include a detailed “data dashboard” with multiple points of data relating to each school.