School officials respond to test scores
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on November 10, 2014 1:46 PM
In the weeks since the state released data on end-of-grade tests, Wayne County Public Schools officials have been "drilling down" to see where works needs to be done.
Deciphering the complicated maze of measures and scores makes this an ongoing job, said David Lewis, assistant superintendent for accountability/information technology services/athletics.
Each school gets a performance composite, while students are ranked according to grade-level proficiency and standards of College and Career Ready.
"Basically, there are five different scores that a kid might get on an EOG, 1 to 5. Grade level proficiency includes all the 3s, 4s and 5s. College and Career Ready only looks at the 4s and 5s and will be lower because it's weeding out the 3s," he said.
In simpler terms, growth compares students to themselves, while proficiency compares this year's group to last year's.
"It's almost like having two children -- she's not as tall as he is but she's taller than she was last year," Lewis explained. "Are you comparing her to him or are you comparing her to herself?
"You're comparing this year's fourth-graders to last year's fourth-graders but how did they compare to themselves?"
School districts want both growth and proficiency, Lewis said.
"We want to be scoring at a very high level and want our kids to be growing at a high level," he said, asking, "Did your kids do as well this year as they were expected to do?' Not did they pass or not pass but did they make a year's worth of growth?"
The Education Value-Based Assessment System, or EVAAS, is used to provide educators with tools to improve student learning.
"The way EVAAS and the state looks at it, they feel like you should maintain your position with your peers. If you're in the middle of the pack and you have a year's growth, theoretically everybody ought to move forward a year."
In the latest scores released in early September, about two-thirds of Wayne County public schools met or exceeded growth, up from the previous year, when about one-half of schools accomplished that goal.
And yet the data is confusing, as it can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, Lewis said.
Brogden Primary School, for example, scored at 28.6 percent at grade level proficient and 19.1 percent College and Career Ready, but "met" growth status while schools like Northeast and Northwest Elementary respectively had 47.2 and 55.1 at grade level proficient and had "not met" growth status.
"We want to figure out why those kids didn't move forward as much as the state thought," Lewis said. "Growth is something that principals take very seriously. They really feel like it's a fair measure of the job they're doing year in and year out."
Parents can visit the EVAAS website and discover more about the individual schools, Lewis said. The public site will not break it down subject by subject, grade level by grade level, but will provide basic information about the school.
Administrators can access a more detailed account on the site to determine areas of concern and how to address them.
"I think more of our principals focus on clusters of students, how it worked or was it successful?" Lewis said. "They have to be careful because if you look kid by kid, you have to take into account all kinds of things besides just academics.
"If they look at clusters of data, they can know what to put in their school improvement plans."
The district forms review teams of support staff to follow up with assigned schools.
"That was something we took seriously because if a school's trying to work on something, how can we help? What curriculum and instruction looks for, what the principals look for are just the resources we use, the way we're presenting those resources. It really varies from school to school," he said. "No two plans look alike. They really personalize it to try to meet the needs of their staff -- professional development, what do we have in place, instructional support that we can provide."
The latest scores presented another challenge, since changes have been made to the testing and accountability programs for public schools, officials said. Two years ago, the state moved to the READY school accountability model, replacing the ABCs program that had been used since the mid 1990s. More rigorous tests and new accountability standards changed the way performance was measured for the end-of-grade and end-of-course tests in all curriculum areas.
"We have never had to break it down like this before," Lewis said. "It does make it difficult to compare from one year to the next. You just have to be very careful about drawing conclusions so you're making good decisions for your schools."
Fortunately, he said, the district has a lot of tools in place to assist administrators and continues to provide customized support at each school.