Glossary of Terms

Although most of the terms in the present document will appear familiar to professional educators, in many cases a slightly more specific meaning has been utilized. This glossary should clarify for the reader those nuances of meaning.

Accreditation. Recognition granted by the NCA Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement verifying that the school/district has met NCA's specific membership and school improvement criteria.

Action Plan. A plan that identifies how and when the school improvement plan will be implemented. It identifies the goals, support data, assessments, interventions, research, staff development, resources, timeline, and persons responsible for implementing the interventions and assessments contained in the school improvement plan.

Affective Goals. School improvement goals that address those understandings, competencies, habits, or attitudes most directly related to the emotional and psychological attributes of students.

Annual Report. An annual report completed by schools (usually via the internet) that updates their compliance with NCA CASI's membership and improvement criteria.

Articulation, Horizontal. Communication, policy development, curricular design, instructional coordination, assessment, and/or other coordination within a grade level and/or subject areas.

Articulation, Vertical. Cooperative planning and communication between schools, grade levels, or subject areas which address policy development, curriculum, instruction, and/or assessment.

Assessment. In an NCA CASI school improvement plan, assessments are instruments used to collect data about and evaluate student performance. Each assessment must be aligned with at least one of the student performance goals in the improvement plan. The quality of assessments is described using the terms "reliable," "valid," and "fair."

Assessment System. A management system containing a set of assessments that is designed to collect and evaluate data about student performance. Baseline Student Performance.

Baseline Student Performance. The status of student achievement at the point in time from which improvement will be tracked.

Chief Educational Leader. The individual charged with the authority and responsibility for the overall operations of a school district or system. The chief educational leader is often referred to as a superintendent.

Climate, Community. The climate of the community is the prevailing opinions, attitudes, and conditions in a school community pertaining to the improvement of the school educational program.

Climate, School. The climate of the school is the prevailing opinions, attitudes, and conditions in the school pertaining to the total school program and its improvement. Aspects such as learning conditions, safety, the academic press, and any extra-classroom conditions affecting students or faculty morale may be viewed as components of the general condition called "climate."

Cognitive Goals. Goals most directly related to the intellectual attributes of students.

Credentialing. A decision about the preparedness of a student to be successful based upon meeting the performance standard in Transitions credentializing areas.

Criteria. Those principles, statements, or guideposts used in evaluating something. Membership and improvement criteria for NCA CASI fall are organized into categories which include Process of Schooling; Information System; School Improvement Plan; Vision, Leadership, Governance, and School Community; and Resource Allocation.

Documentation Report. A written report that documents the results of implementing the school improvement plan.

Educational Program. The entire set of planned and incidental experiences that students may experience in the school.

Employability Skills. A credentialing area in Transitions. Employability skills are skills that employees need to be successful in their employment.

Endorsement (School Improvement Endorsement, Outcomes Endorsement, and Transitions Endorsement). Endorsement is the recognition that has been given to schools that have successfully completed a school improvement cycle. NCA has had a "School Improvement Endorsement" (SI), an "Outcomes Endorsement" (OE), and a Transitions Endorsement (TE). NCA CASI has created a school improvement framework called "Performance Accreditation" and is phasing out endorsements. Schools that completed their improvement cycle during the 2000-2001 school year will begin implementing Performance Accreditation in the 2001-2002 school year. All other schools will complete the endorsement they started and will implement Performance Accreditation in their next improvement cycle.

Effect Size/Statistical Significance. Effect size tells the magnitude of growth and is therefore helpful in the school improvement process to show program improvement. Statistical significance tells us the probability that the change would be what it is. Statistical significance does NOT tell the magnitude of improvement and is therefore NOT as helpful in the school improvement process.

Essence of a Goal. The essence of a goal is the conceptual basis of the goal. When two people are talking about a student performance goal, it is often assumed that the two people have the same meaning for that goal. However, often we use the same term and have very different meanings. For example, when schools select a goal related to "citizenship" there is potential for confusion. Does citizenship mean compliance with rules or adult authority? Does it mean service to others? Does it mean participation in representative governance? Since the concept may embody several facets, each of which would require a set of interventions and assessments different from the other facets, it is important that staffs discuss what they intend when they use the term. They need to come to consensus on what the focus will be. The NCA Expert Database contains samples of goal essence for over 50 goal areas. The NCA Expert Database can be found on the Commission website at http://www.ncacasi.org. Finding the essence of school improvement goals for your school can be very helpful in aligning assessments and interventions with the goal and in implementing the action plan.

Expert Database. The Expert Database can be found on the Commission web site at http://www.ncacasi.org. It contains essences of goals, possible assessments for those goals, and possible interventions for those goals. It is currently being updated.

Goal/Student Performance Goal. Student goals are (1) knowledge, (2) skills at applying knowledge to a variety of contexts, (3) habits or patterns of behavior, or (4) attitudes, perception, beliefs, or opinions that are to be developed within students. NCA CASI has identified specific ways in which goals should be written and those guidelines contained in NCA's Team Chair Software. All of the goals in the NCA school improvement plan are student performance goals.

Governing Body. The representative body that is empowered to make policy and financial decisions for a school or school system In many states, the governing body is a school board.

Host School. The school hosting a peer review team visit as a result of its cumulative work in developing an action plan for improving student performance.

Improvement Criteria. Requirements that a school must meet in order to sustain its membership in NCA.

Individual Student Intervention Plan. A specific plan designed to meet the needs of an individual student who has not yet met the performance standard in a Transitions credentialiing area.

Information System. The information system is a formal system for collecting, organizing, managing, retrieving, distributing, and analyzing data. The system converts data into information that is usable by others.

Intervention/Strategy/Activities. An intervention is something that is done to or with students to develop something specific with those students. One might have a strategy to move to block scheduling, but what teachers do with students within the block of time is the intervention. It is the interventions that actually take place with students that will affect student performance

Membership Criteria. Requirements a school must meet to be admitted to membership as an NCA CASI school.

Mission. The mission is a statement that identifies the priorities/educational beliefs of the school/district with regard to what is to be developed within its students.

Multiple Assessments. Currently, NCA CASI requires schools to use multiple assessments to determine progress on each student performance goal.

NCA Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. The North Central Association has two Commissions. The Commission on Higher Learning serves universities and the Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement serves pre- kindergarten - twelfth grade and special school populations. Member schools voluntarily join NCA CASI.

NCA Software. NCA CASI has developed three pieces of stand alone software. The School Leaders and Team Chair Software provides a toolkit for peer review and steering chairpersons. Profile Software assists a school in constructing a school profile. Data Analysis Software provides a database for maintaining student performance data; it assists in determining the magnitude of growth or improvement; and it assists in the formulation of a documentation report. The site license allows schools to place the software on any and all computers within the member school. All three pieces of software are provided to member schools only and should be removed from all school computers if the school discontinues NCA membership.

Peer Review Chairperson/Team. A peer review team is comprised of educators who assist the school in designing and implementing the NCA school improvement plan. The chairperson and team members are volunteers from schools outside the host school's district. The chairperson helps the member school through the entire improvement cycle, and the chairperson coordinates the efforts of the peer review team. Team members and chairpersons are selected based upon the specific expertise needed by the school and their knowledge of the NCA CASI Protocol and Performance Accreditation Framework.

Performance Accreditation. Performance accreditation is a rigorous school improvement framework based on the school's ability to demonstrate that student performance is improving. In Performance Accreditation, schools are expected to move toward the NCA CASI standard of increasing the proportion of students who are prepared to be successful at the next transition.

Performance Standard. A performance standard is a specific level of achievement on an assessment or set of assessments. In Transitions schools, students must meet the performance standards in order to be credentialed.

Phases. The NCA CASI Performance Accreditation Framework can be organized into eight distinct phases. These phases are explained in detail in the monograph entitled, Implementing the School Improvement Process, that was sent to every NCA CASI member school in the fall of 2000. The monograph can be downloaded at no cost from the Commission website http://www.ncacasi.org by NCA CASI member schools.

Profile/School Profile. A school profile is a 15-25 page document that contains data about the school. The data in the profile helps to guide the design of the key components of the school improvement plan including: goal clarification, selection of assessments for each goal, identification of possible interventions, and the need for specific support elements to be included in the action plan.

Protocol/NCA Protocol. A set of procedures and processes that are standard for all NCA schools. The Protocol establishes a school improvement cycle of five years and requires that schools host two peer review team visits during the cycle. Additional details of the Protocol can be found in the NCA CASI handbook entitled Implementing the School Improvement Process that can be downloaded at no cost from the Commission web site (http://www.ncacasi.org) by NCA CASI member schools.

Psychomotor Skills. Those capabilities and competencies pertaining to the motor (physical) attributes of students.

Regular. Performed or completed at least on an annual basis.

Resources. Resources include all the human, financial, material, and technological means of support for the school program and the school's program of improvement.

School Community. The school community is comprised of all persons within the school and all persons in the attendance area of the school, as well as the geographical and physical environs. For selected considerations, "school community" may be considered to include some contiguous portions of the larger society, as appropriate.

School Improvement Cycle/Five-Year Cycle/Cycle. The NCA CASI Performance Accreditation Framework and its Protocol are designed for a five-year implementation cycle from start through the documentation of improvement.

School Improvement Plan. A school improvement plan includes an identification of the student performance goals, the assessments that are aligned with each of the goals, the interventions that are aligned with each of those goals, and an implementation plan.

Standard Unit/Standard Score. Standard units/standard scores identify how far a specific score is from the mean score using standard deviations for the unit of measure, hence the term "standard unit." Two scores can often be contrasted by placing both of them on the same normal curve and then finding the distance between them in standard units. The NCA CASI software will convert certain student performance scores to standard scores, find the standard score difference, and interpret that difference, for NCA purposes, automatically.

Steering Committee. A representative group of people from the school and community that provides leadership and direction to the school improvement process. Each steering committee has a chairperson assigned to coordinate the activities of the committee. The committee ensures that all components of the NCA CASI process are addressed and that the tasks are completed in a timely fashion.

Student Performance Goal. A school improvement goal that addresses the skills, knowledge, habits, attitudes, and behaviors that we wish to improve in students.

Transitions. Transitions is the exemplary stage of Performance Accreditation. Transitions is a school improvement model that focuses on each student demonstrating success in skills required at the next level of schooling or life transition. In Transitions, individual student performance data are monitored and intervention plans are constructed for students who are not successful in specified learning areas. More information about Transitions can be found on the NCA CASI web site at http://www.ncacasi.org/.

Transitions Declaration. In Transitions schools, a statement that an individual student has achieved pre-determined skill levels in a credentialinng area.

Vision. A vision document describes in detail the components and characteristics of the schools that would be required to fulfill a specific mission. A vision statement is a clear description of the kind of system that will be needed to deliver the mission of the organization.