The SCALE Quality Indicator System (SQIS) was designed to monitor key indicators in the four participating school districts over time. While the system's design incorporated components such as outcome variables, process variables, organizational variables, and interactions among variables, it is acknowledged that a number of years would be needed to develop such a system in full. The development of the indicator system began with the gathering of student achievement data from all four districts for up to four years prior to the inauguration of SCALE in the district. The plan was then to monitor student achievement in the four participating school districts over the course of the project’s involvement with the school district. Student achievement data generally is available about a year after the administration of the test. This report has data for each of the four school districts through 2005, or for two years of SCALE participation in the districts.

This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 11-15, 2005, in Montrèal, Québec, Canada.

The SCALE Quality Indicator System is a set of indicators that represent major SCALE attributes as described in the strategic plan and annual reports. An indicator is a statistic that has particular meaning. The SCALE Quality Indicator System is a work-in-progress. The purpose of this paper is to describe in some detail the design of the indicator system and to provide samples of some statistics that will likely evolve into indicators. The paper concludes with acknowledgement of major challenges that exist.