Project Scenario:
Your Mars rover is starting to run low on energy, but thankfully, the engineers at NASA have devised a plan to drop a spare solar panel from a satellite orbiting above Mars. The solar panel will be dropped from the satellite and will begin the reentry process into Mars’ atmosphere. Once it begins the reentry process, the solar panel will begin a trajectory towards the area in which your rover is currently sitting. Unfortunately you won’t be able to gather any data on the solar panel until it is directly overhead. Your task is to approximate the trajectory/landing spot of the solar panel once the data is received. After doing so, your rover is expected to be programmed so that it is able to drive to that landing spot and catch the solar panel to be used for the energy source on your rover.
13-STEM Integration
In SY2014-15, Georgia piloted the Milestones Assessment. Although scores that year did not count, 24% of all PRHS Biology students scored in the “Distinguished” Achievement Level, while another 32% were “Proficient” on the Spring 2015 assessment. Because of the way SPIRE Bio/LA was structured in 2015-16, courses were one semester each, so the two semesters reflected in the graph reflect the equivalent of two “years” of data. This year, since SPIRE Bio/LA is a yearlong course, students will not be taking the Milestones until May, 2017.
The Spring 2015 data points represent all Biology students testing and serves as a baseline for comparison with the performance of SPIRE students during SY15-16; the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 data points represent only SPIRE students. In the inaugural semester, SPIRE students scored 57% higher than students had the year before at the proficient/distinguished achievement level (a difference of 32 percentage points) and 50% higher at the distinguished achievement level (a difference of 12 percentage points). The second time that SPIRE was taught (Spring 2016), student achievement continued to increase an additional 6 percentage points at the proficient/distinguished level and 12 percentage points at the distinguished level. In other words, over the course of two semesters (the equivalent of two years at a traditional 6 period high school), student performance at the distinguished level DOUBLED from the original baseline.
See the Index for additional standardized measures which document SPIRE students’ academic growth over time.
The percent of non-SPIRE Biology students scoring at the proficient/distinguished level in Fall 2015 (54%) was comparable to the percent of all students scoring at the proficient/distinguished level in Spring 2015 (56%). During the inaugural semester (Fall 2015), every subgroup in SPIRE Biology significantly outperformed its’ counterpart in traditional (non-SPIRE) Biology. Asian students in SPIRE were more than twice as likely to score at the distinguished level on Milestones than non-SPIRE students (33% vs 14%) and more than twice as likely to score at the proficient/distinguished level (94% vs 44%). Black SPIRE students were 45% more successful in scoring at the proficient/distinguished level than non-SPIRE students (64% vs 44%). Hispanic students in SPIRE scored in the proficient/distinguished level 25% more than their non-SPIRE counterparts (50% vs 40%), while White SPIRE students were more than three times as likely to score at the distinguished level than non-SPIRE students (52% vs 15%).
In Spring 2016, gap closure in equity of achievement was realized by both Black and Hispanic SPIRE students as they were 135% and 134% more successful (as defined by scoring at the proficient/ distinguished achievement level) than Black and Hispanic students in traditional Biology (94% vs 40% and 82% vs 35% respectively). Both White and Asian SPIRE students were more than three times as likely to score at the distinguished level than their non-SPIRE counterparts (58% vs 14% for each subgroup).
A greater percentage of students achieved the highest performance level in Spring 2015, the second semester that SPIRE was offered. From Fall 2015 to Spring 2016, student achievement at the distinguished level increased for Asian, Black and White SPIRE students by 25, 19 and 6 percentage points (58% vs 33%, 19% vs 0% and 58% vs 52% respectively).
Economically disadvantaged students in SPIRE chemistry were almost twice as likely to pass (96.2% vs 52.0%) and more than twice as likely to exceed (17.0% vs 6.5%) as students in traditional chemistry. And whereas economically disadvantaged students were unsuccessful on the Gateway at more than twice the rate of non-SES students in a traditional classroom (48.1% vs 21.0% failure rate), economically disadvantaged students in a SPIRE classroom were less than half as likely to fail (3.8% vs 10.1% failure rate).
19-Accountability
Economically disadvantaged students in SPIRE chemistry were almost twice as likely to pass (96.2% vs 52.0%) and more than twice as likely to exceed (17.0% vs 6.5%) as students in traditional chemistry. And whereas economically disadvantaged students were unsuccessful on the Gateway at more than twice the rate of non-SES students in a traditional classroom (48.1% vs 21.0% failure rate), economically disadvantaged students in a SPIRE classroom were less than half as likely to fail (3.8% vs 10.1% failure rate).