The bulletin also measures “the percentage of EL students who have made progress towards the proficiency goal”, but it does not provide more information about the methods used to collect this data, or an analysis of what the numbers provided mean, although there are a link at the bottom of the page suggests that the data may come from the WIDA assessment. English students and other groups, such as those with Individualized Education Plans and Individual Learning Plans, which traditionally perform poorly in standardized assessments, are also counted multiple times in the bulletin data because they do multiple assessments, which means that groups statistically unrepresentative can have an exaggerated influence on final grades and essentially penalize schools for having a larger number of students who traditionally do not perform well in standardized assessments. This is especially a problem because SC, in its ESSA plan, has indicated that it will not provide assessments in languages other than English.
