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 three years and a three-year average. 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 2019 BTO score of 9.7 indicates their 2019 CCRPI score was 9.7 points higher than the average of other schools serving similar students.

The three-year average is included because the CCRPI formula, which serves as a basis for Beating the Odds, tends to fluctuate from year to year, and a three year average is more predictive of future performance.

Use the menus on the right to view BTO scores for different grade levels or clusters, or to sort by BTO scores. 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 2019 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 2019. However, after controlling for differences in student population with the BTO metric, 55% of APS schools scored higher than predicted². The visual below shows the relationship between predicted and actual CCRPI scores and the percentage of APS schools that have scored higher than predicted over time. Schools above the trend line 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. Starting in 2018 the 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.
2. 41% of APS schools were designated as Beat the Odds, which requires scoring a certain amount above predicted. We use above predicted in the graph below because it is more comparable over time due to changes in the state’s BTO designations.