Goal -- The level of effectiveness reached by the top 20 percent of students in a group with which the Fort Worth group is compared. This is the goal SchoolMatch sets for Fort Worth.
Mean -- The average reached by the student groups with which the Fort Worth group is compared.
Current status -- The levels currently reached by the Fort Worth district or school.
Attendance -- Percent of students attending classes on an average day.
Reading, math percentile -- Where students ranked on norm-referenced (national achievement) tests on a scale of 0 to 99, compared with all the students who took the test. Ninety-nine is the top percentile, not the grade on the test. For example, a rank in the 57th percentile means 42 percent of students scored higher and 56 percent scored lower.
Advanced-placement juniors-seniors -- Percent of high school juniors and seniors enrolled in a school or district who took college-level advanced-placement courses; percent of advanced-placement students who took the optional exit exam for college credit; percent of those who took the advanced-placement exam and received college credit.
Mean ACT -- The average score on the American College Testing college entrance exam.
Mean SAT -- The average score on the SAT college entrance exam. Most Texas colleges and universities require this exam.
Dropout rate -- Cumulative rate calculated by SchoolMatch showing the percentage of students who were enrolled in ninth grade but are not enrolled in 12th grade and have not told the district that they are transferring.
Teacher absence -- Average number of days teachers are absent, not including long-term absences or days they are in training.
GPA -- Grade-point average, based on a student's numerical grades in each high school course. Typically the scale is 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest. Honors and advanced-placement classes have a scale from 1 to 5.
TAAS (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills) -- State exams given in various subjects beginning in third grade. Numbers indicate the percentage of students passing a particular exam in a school, in the district and in the state.
TLI (Texas Learning Index) -- A state statistic that allows for comparison of TAAS performance across years and across grades. Earning the same score from year to year indicates the same amount of achievement. A TLI score of 70 represents the passing standard on the TAAS. For example, the first chart shows that 67.8 percent of Carter-Riverside 10th-graders passed the TAAS reading test. But the TLI of 73 indicates that the rest of the class was close to passing. (The TLI is `not' a test grade or percentage based on a score of 100.)