The Georgia Department of Education uses the College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI) to measure school effectiveness. However, we see that CCRPI results are correlated with factors outside of a school’s control, like the percentage of economically disadvantaged students¹. To measure how schools perform compared to those serving similar students, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement uses the Beating the Odds (BTO) metric. This metric compares a school’s CCRPI score with the performance of schools with similar characteristics across the state. The BTO formula includes factors like the percentage of students in poverty, students with disabilities, and English learners. See here for a complete list.

The table below shows Beating the Odds scores for APS schools over the past four years. High-performing results are shown in blue. For example, the table shows that Burgess-Peterson Elementary consistently has a high Beating the Odds score. Their 2018 BTO score of 12.7 indicates their 2018 CCRPI score was 12.7 points higher than the average of other schools serving similar students.

Use the menus on the left to view BTO scores for different grade levels or clusters. Notice there are grade-level options for schools with non-traditional grade bands. For example, Hollis switches from “Elementary” to “K-8” in 2018. This follows how GOSA shares the data.

GOSA reported 2018 BTO results as “Beating the Odds”, “Within Expected Range”, and “Below Expected Range”, but their results also include predicted scores (based on the average of similar schools) and actual scores, which allows us to produce the more detailed results above.

Atlanta Public Schools’ district level CCRPI score was lower than the state’s in 2018. However, after controlling for differences in student population with the BTO metric, 52% of APS schools qualified as Beating the Odds, compared to only 32% of schools statewide. The graph below shows the relationship between predicted and actual CCRPI scores. APS schools, highlighted in blue, tend to be above the trend line, which means the majority of APS schools performed better than other schools that serve similar students.

BTO results also appear on our school profile page as the second indicator, titled, “CCRPI Comparison”.

For those interested, here are a few additional notes on BTO:

• For more information on the CCRPI, see our results blog post, or the state’s CCRPI page.
• The BTO technical manual is here. The short explanation is that the BTO score is calculated using a regression of school CCRPI scores on school demographic variables, using all public schools in Georgia. The resulting coefficients are then used to calculate each school’s predicted CCRPI score.
• Both the BTO and CCRPI calculations changed in 2018. The BTO model is similar to previous years. Changes include adding nonlinear terms to the regression and running different models by school size.
• Before 2018, the BTO model used CCRPI score minus challenge points. 2018 CCRPI does not include a challenge points component.

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1. Milestones achievement is a large component of CCRPI. See here for the relationship between Milestones achievement and poverty.