ASPIRE: Understanding the New Framework for Your School's Success
As a school leader, you know that understanding your school’s performance is critical for making informed decisions and ensuring student success. With the introduction of the new ASPIRE system, it's more important than ever to grasp how your school is being evaluated. ASPIRE, which stands for Annual School Performance Index Report & Evaluation, is a complex new framework, but understanding its components and calculation methods will help you positively influence your school's score.
Why ASPIRE Matters to You
The DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB) uses ASPIRE to make school oversight decisions. School leaders, in turn, can use this data to understand their impact on student outcomes and identify areas for improvement. The ASPIRE Levels assigned to your school will determine your eligibility to expand your student numbers and provide families with important metrics as they evaluate their school options.
For the 2024-2025 accountability cycle that is underway now, DC PCSB will publicly report this data for every campus; in the future, they’ll expand this reporting to include LEA-wide metrics, including data based on your School-Specific Performance Metrics (SSPMs), measures that schools select to be evaluated on.
The ASPIRE Frameworks and Categories
ASPIRE is not a one-size-fits-all system. It is composed of five distinct frameworks, each tailored to different grade configurations. Within these frameworks, schools are evaluated on four categories:
School Progress
School Achievement
School Environment
School-Specific Performance
Categories are weighted differently based on the LEA’s grade configuration. For example, a High School framework weighs the "School Achievement" category at 50%, while a PK-5 Elementary school's "School Achievement" is weighted at 22%. School leaders should be clear on which grade configuration applies to their campus and how those weights will apply to their data.
How Scores are Calculated: Floors, Targets, and Student Groups
Each category is composed of multiple measures. The calculation of an ASPIRE score is nuanced, and it's essential to understand the factors that drive it. Every measure within the ASPIRE system has a floor, a target, and a total number of points possible.
Floors and Targets: If a school's performance on a measure falls below the "floor," it receives zero points for that measure. Performance at or above the "target" earns the school all available points for that measure. Scores between the floor and target are awarded points proportionally to where it is between the floor and the target.
Student Group Weighting: A school’s total points for each measure are based on the performance of each student group. A single student's performance can contribute to the same measure between one and four times if they belong to multiple groups. For example, a student will always have an “Economically Disadvantaged” status and a “Race/Ethnicity” status; they may ALSO have a Disability or Multilingual learner status, or both. Knowing which student scores will count for which categories will help you understand where these calculations are coming from.
The 10-Student Threshold: For a student group to be counted in a measure, it must have at least 10 students. If a group has fewer than 10 students, those students do not contribute to the score, and their points are redistributed among the other student groups. This means that the points possible for a measure can change depending on your school's student demographics.
Taking Action: Next Steps for Your School
Confused yet? ASPIRE is complex - the calculations are detailed and overlapping. However, it’s worthwhile for school leaders to invest time in digging deeper into the framework so they can apply it to their own student populations.
If you’re already working with EdOps, you’ll receive quarterly reports with ASPIRE projections to help with this analysis. These reports will provide a look back at the 2024-2025 school year before projecting for the current 2025-2026 school year.
If you’d like to learn more about how EdOps reports on ASPIRE, reach out to info@ed-ops.com. We also recommend checking out the ASPIRE Policy & Technical Guide, which contains all the calculation business rules, including floors and targets.