Thank you for attending my presentation today. If you have any questions or are interested in using the Academic Support Index please email me at davestevens@berkeley.net. If you would like to view the presentation, please click here.
Background...
All students enter school with a combination of "headwinds" and "tailwinds". Tailwinds are the things that make school easier for students. Tailwinds may include factors such as coming from a home with parents of high education levels and economic stability, being a native English speaker, not having a disability, or being a member of the cultural majority. Each of those characteristics plays a role in helping a student experience success in school.
Headwinds on the other hand make school more difficult. Headwinds can include having economic instability at home, parents with lower levels of education, having a disability, or still learning English. The more headwinds a student has, the more difficulty they will have in maximizing their academic potential and the more “tailwinds” they will need. Tailwinds come in the form of high-quality instruction, support, and intervention.
The Academic Support Index, or ASI, quantifies these headwinds. A student’s ASI is the sum of their headwinds. Their ASI can also be considered a measure of the amount of support that they will need in order to mitigate the impact of those educational headwinds. Students with a low ASI will likely need very little additional support outside of Tier 1 instruction. Higher ASI students will likely need proportionally higher amounts of Tier 2 and sometimes Tier 3 supports.
There is a strong relationship between the ASI and academic outcomes including assessments such as the SAT, Smarter Balanced Assessments, AP and IB tests, kindergarten screeners, grade point averages, rates of college eligibility, matriculation, and degree attainment. We have studied these effects over seven years of data as well as across urban, suburban, and rural schools. To date over 400,000 students have been scored on the ASI. (See the featured post below for a list of papers and presentations on the ASI).
Because the ASI is able to reliably predict student outcomes you have to opportunity to interrupt that predictability by using the ASI to make sure that you are identifying the right students for early intervention and support. With effective intervention, predictive analytics can become preventive analytics.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
CERA Presentation: ASI vs. LCFF
Thank you for attending my presentation today. If you have any questions or are interested in using the Academic Support Index please email me at davestevens@berkeley.net. If you would like to view the presentation, please click here.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
A post for schools where all the students might considered to be "at-risk"
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
LCAP: Which is better at identifying potentially underperforming students: ASI 3+ or "Unduplicated"?
Monday, November 9, 2015
One consideration for schools working to improve the outcomes for struggling students...
Monday, July 20, 2015
Boosting Test Performance for Academically At-Risk Students and Interrupting the Predictability of Student Outcomes
Identifying Students for Support During the Transition from Middle School to High School
Sunday, February 22, 2015
The Impact of disproportionality when disaggregating student performance by race
Monday, December 8, 2014
A link to a video of a presentation of the Academic Support Index given to members of community based organizations and the 2020 Vision team can be found here.