Performance varies widely between districts throughout the state in both ELA and Math. In order to gauge a school or district's relative performance to other districts, it is useful to have a comparison group in order to answer the question of "how are we performing as compared to our peers." The question then is how to define our peers.

After reviewing relationships between performance and many of the other variables available to us, we found that there is a consistent correlation between low income % and the various metrics indicative of student achievement that generally varies from moderate to strong (R>=0.6 and R>=0.8, respectively) depending on the selected schools or districts. While not perfect, this provides one basis by which to group districts or schools that we could expect to perform in a similar way.

While this is certainly not the only possible approach to develop peer groups, it does help us put context around a district's performace in terms of being typical, above, or below its low income peers. Our scores tell us how we are doing in general, but by using peer groups it helps to answer the question of: "how should we be doing?" The assumption in place is that all other things being equal, a district is likely to perform similarly to its low income peers; the implication is that if a district is not performing in that way, then all things are not equal. These are the items that we should be able to control and adjust when a underperforming one's peers, and conversely, share with others to help them improve when a district rises to the top of its group.

To make this type of analysis quick and easy, this filter has been added to this system to allow the user to quickly analyze a school or district's performance against its low income peer group.