eITP

About eITP

eITP is a free service produced by Iowa Testing Programs that provides district-level Iowa Assessment growth data to district administrators in an online, interactive format. eITP represents a continuing effort on the part of Iowa Testing Programs to make test data informative and useful for the schools in Iowa.

The growth profiles represent the core functionality of eITP. They currently display up to six years of growth data for the grade cohorts or for individuals in your district. It shows relative strengths and weaknesses across the Iowa subtests and lets you highlight subtests where particularly high and low growth has occurred. A subgraph allows you to plot trends by subtests. Data tables and filters are available to support your own data analyses with programs like Microsoft Excel. See the Tutorials for more information.

eITP provides both Standard Score (SS) and Grade Equivalent (GE) data. Group level eITP will default to GE in elementary and middle school years and default to SS in the high school years. The eITP individual level growth profile will default to standard scores.

Sample individual graph:

Sample group graph:

Restricted access

Access to eITP is restricted based on the roles a user is assigned to. Users assigned to the roles of “District Assistant Master” and “eITP District Master” can view all of the products available through eITP and can create users in the roles “eITP District User,” “eITP Building User,” “eITP Individual Access User,” and “eITP Core Report User.” More information on roles is available in the Roles portion of the Help. Users can only view data for their own school or district; users with building level or individual access rights can only view students from the buildings or grades assigned during user account setup.”

Data Security

This site is hosted on a secure server using an encryption technique known as Secure Socket Layers (SSL). This is the same type of encryption used by online financial institutions and e-commerce sites. Every attempt has been made to maintain the security of this site. You can maintain the security of your district's data by following these suggestions:

Never write your password down in an insecure location. Never reveal your password to anyone or share your login information with others. Passwords for accounts on our site must be at least 9 characters (preferably more) and must contain at least one letter, one number and one special character, and cannot contain repeated or serial characters (e.g. aaa111, abcd1234). New passwords cannot match the previous password used. Passwords should be changed annually. Always use the "Log Off" link when you are finished, and close your browser.

Data Availability

Iowa Assessments data are available for grades K-12, for current students and recent graduates. Data are available for the current year and the five previous school years. Data for the current school year are added to the site at regular intervals, usually no later than the third business day of each month for any data received by ITP by the end of the previous month. Starting in April of each school year, data are added to the site roughly every 15 calendar days. Some grade cohorts in the group level display will have no data available in some years they were tested if they do not meet the minimum reporting requirements.

The data in the group level display can be disaggregated according to the following designations: Male, Female, Free and Reduced-Price Lunch (FRL), Individualized Education Program (IEP), Native American, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, White. If you do not see a particular subgroup, either no data are available, or the data did not meet the minimum requirements for growth profile displays.

Calculations of Averages and Total Scores – Group Level Display

The data reported are the National Grade Equivalent (NGE) of the average Standard Score (SS). First, standard scores for the students are averaged, then the National Grade Equivalent that corresponds to that average standard score is reported on these charts. The reason for this procedure is that standard scores are the most suitable metric for growth calculations like averaging, but Grade Equivalents are more easily interpretable.

Total test scores are the unweighted average of the subtest scores shown to the left of the Total in the Growth Profile. These averages are performed on the Standard Score metric and then converted to Grade Equivalents. The Core Total is the average of the Reading Total, the Language Total, and the Math Total. The Composite is an average of the Reading Total, Language Total, Math Total, Social Studies, Science, and Sources of Information Total. If a student does not take all of the tests that make up a total, that student will not receive a total score and will not be included in the district average for the total score. Note that the Language Total and Math Total scores have special meanings in certain grades, as noted in the footnotes for the Growth Profiles.

The students are generally the same as those included in your system averages each year. Like your system averages, these data represent the average scores of all eligible students tested in the grade that year. In some cases, averages are removed when they do not meet the minimum requirements for growth reporting. These requirements include an N-count greater than 10, an N-count that is greater than 25% of the maximum N-count across subtests in a particular year, and an N-count that is greater than 25% of the maximum N-count within a particular subtest across years. These requirements prevent invalid interpretations of growth when N-counts change dramatically.

Interpretation

Standard scores are the best scale for serious growth analyses. They allow for statistically defensible growth interpretation, but they are difficult to interpret at a glance. For casual interpretations in the lower grades, Grade Equivalents are best. To track growth over time, however, and for all analyses at the high school level, where grade interpretations become less well defined, Standard Scores are the best choice.

Grade Equivalent is referenced to the academic proficiency of a student from a national sample at a particular grade. A Grade Equivalent of 4.5, for example, corresponds to academic performance at the level of a student from a national sample in the fifth month of the fourth grade. Since eITP deals with district averages, a district GE of 4.5 corresponds to average performance in your district that is equivalent to a student from a national sample in the fifth month of the fourth grade. As always, Grade Equivalents are specific to the achievement domain being tested. A high or low GE should not be interpreted to mean that a student or students should be advanced or held back a grade; it is only an indicator of academic performance in one or more particular achievement domains.

Growth

Expected growth is a surprisingly complicated topic. At first glance, it may seem that one GE should be the growth expected for each student. However, students at higher levels of academic achievement are often observed to grow faster than students at lower levels of academic achievement. With eITP, we use growth projections based on the growth required to maintain the average National Percentile Rank. If the average score of students in a district corresponds to the 65th Percentile Rank, for example, eITP displays a growth projection required to maintain the 65th Percentile Rank over time. This projection is available for both the GE and SS score scales. More details are available in the Growth Profile tutorial.

In the group level display, particularly large differences in GEs and SSs may be an artifact of substantial changes in population sizes. It is important to look at the Cohort Size table to see if N-counts changed dramatically. You may also notice large changes in N-counts by using the dot size legend, or by simply pointing the mouse at a data point on the Growth Profile and observing the N-count. If N-counts are very similar, the large gain or loss is likely indicative of a large change in the academic achievement of your students over that time period.

The Cohort Sizes table is very helpful in tempering interpretations of student growth on the group level display. This table shows the number of students in each cohort over time. Fluctuations in cohort N-counts over time should change interpretations of growth because it suggests that the population of students has changed, rather than that a static cohort has improved or declined. If the cohort identity remains constant over time, interpretations about average student growth are more defensible.

System Requirements

eITP will display properly using Internet Explorer 6 or later (PC), Firefox 2 or later (PC and Mac), Opera 9 or later (PC and Mac), Safari 1.2 or later (Mac). You will need Adobe Flash Player version 9 or later, which is available as a free download from Adobe. You will also need to have JavaScript enabled in your web browser.

How to use eITP

For sample graphs or additional information about how to use eITP to retrieve district, building, or student-level data for Iowa schools, we have a FAQ available as well as several tutorials on the main eITP page.

Setting up a user account for eITP individual level access.

Any user that has the role of “District Assistant Master” or “eITP District Master” can set up user accounts for eITP Individual Access. Note that access to individual data for users in this role will automatically expire each summer and will need to be re-set (if desired) for access once school starts again in the fall. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your web browser.

The new role allows for users to be customized so that they are only allowed to view data at the building or grade level.

• Log in to Online Tools using your user name and password.
• Click on the “People/Accounts” link under the “Personnel/School Info heading in the left-hand side menu (you may have to scroll down to find this).
• Select “Add new person.”
• Fill out the form for adding a new user account and select the user role “eITP Individual Access” and click “Save” when done with this part of the form.
• Choose the buildings the new user should have data access to from the list of those available on Online Tools and click “Next”
• Select grades for the chosen buildings you want the user to have data access to and click “Save.”

Your new user is now set up and their access is limited to the buildings and grades in your district or school system as you selected.

Users currently in the roles of District Assistant Master and eITP District Master will already have individual access rights to their districts and do not require a separate user role to be designated in their user accounts.

Setting up a user account for eITP Building User access.

Any user that has the role of “District Assistant Master” or “eITP District Master” can set up user accounts in the new role of “eITP Building User.”

The new role allows for users to be customized so that they are only allowed to view group level data at the building level for the buildings you choose during account creation.

• Log in to Online Tools using your user name and password.
• Click on the “People/Accounts” link under the “Personnel/School Info heading in the left-hand side menu (you may have to scroll down to find this).
• Select “Add new person.”
• Fill out the form for adding a new user account and select the user role “eITP Building User” and click “Save” when done with this part of the form.
• Choose the buildings the new user should have data access to from the list of those available on Online Tools and click “Save.” (Note: If this user has also been assigned the “eITP Individual Access” role, you will see a “Next” option here instead of “Save.” The next step will be to select the grades for the chosen buildings you want the user to have data access to and click “Save.” These grades are only for individual records – anyone with “eITP Building User” access will see the group data for the whole building)

Your new user is now set up and their access is limited to the buildings in your district or school system as you selected.

Users currently in the roles of District Assistant Master and eITP District Master will already have eITP building level rights to their districts and do not require a separate user role to be designated in their user accounts.