By Dominik Lobkowicz
Data shared by RSU 40 staff on student proficiency in reading and math shows nearly all the district’s schools are falling short of state-set – but school-specific – goals.
Director of Instruction Kim Schroeter presented the scores to the RSU 40 Board of Directors at its meeting May 1.
The proficiency rates are based on the New England Common Assessment Program test for grades three through eight, taken each fall, and the SAT for third-year high school students, taken each spring.
Based on school-specific goals set by a formula from the Maine Department of Education, RSU 40 schools in the current school year are as much as 45 percentage points off the mark, though most are between 10 and 20 percent behind their school-specific goals.
Some proficiency rates based on the testing in the fall of 2013, such as math proficiency at Union Elementary School or reading at Miller School, have improved beyond their 2011 levels, but still fall behind the DOE’s goals. Most of the current rates are behind even their original benchmark levels.
Data for proficiency at Medomak Valley High School for the current school year is not yet available as the students only took the SAT on May 3, according to Schroeter.
This data, provided by RSU 40 Director of Instruction Kim Schroeter, shows “benchmark” proficiency rates in math and reading in district schools in the 2011-2012 school year; school-specific targets for the 2017-2018 school year based on a state formula; an “annual measurable objective” or annual increase target; and both actual and target proficiency rates for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years. |
In an interview May 6, Schroeter said the Maine Department of Education developed the formula for calculating proficiency goals as part of a waiver process with the U.S. Department of Education.
The Elementary Secondary Education Act, which has set proficiency goals since the 1960s, was typically reauthorized every few years and most recently was reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act by President George W. Bush, Schroeter said.
Since then, the expectations outlined in the program have not changed, and the U.S. Department of Education has let states apply for waivers to set their own standards, she said.
“Maine believed in a growth model – this is a growth model – and they got them to okay this,” Schroeter said.
Maine received approval of the waiver in the summer of 2013, Schroeter said, and the waiver used the NECAP test taken by students in the fall of 2011 as the “benchmark year” for its goal-setting formula.
The formula, according to Schroeter, took the percentage of students in a given school not proficient in a given subject (math or reading), halved that number, and used that percentage as the targeted increase for the school by the 2017-2018 school year.
That targeted increase was divided by six to create an “annual measurable objective,” or an annual increase target, based on the six years between the benchmark year and the year the overall target was supposed to be reached.
As an example, if John Doe Middle School had only 40 percent of their students proficient in math in 2011, the formula would generate a target of 70 percent proficient (the original 40 percent proficient, plus 30 percent – half the 60 percent of students not proficient) by 2017.
Each year, John Doe Middle School’s goal would increase by one-sixth of the 30 percent increase, or 5 percent. In 2012 the goal would be 45 percent proficiency, 50 percent in 2013, 55 percent in 2014, and so on.
As far as a definition of proficiency, Schroeter said the tests use “cut scores,” where if a student receives a certain score or higher, they are considered proficient.
In high school, the SAT cut score is 460 out of 800; in other grades the cut scores are percentage-based ranging from the high 50s in the lower grades to the mid-60s in the higher grades, Schroeter said.
Essentially, the students need to “get a little more than half right” to be considered proficient, she said.
Asked what factors are contributing to the declining scores, Schroeter said, “I have no idea. I’m a little surprised that they did so well in 2011-2012” and then only Union Elementary School improved their rates in the 2012-2013 school year.
The tests are supposed to be of equal difficulty from year to year, based on metrics called a “p-value,” Schroeter said.
“The level of the tests in 2012 and 2013 should be comparable to the test in 2011. The only difference that I do know … the 2012 and 2013 tests, they selected items that they could cross-reference to the Common Core (new proficiency-based state standards for math and reading). I know they did that, it still shouldn’t have made a difference because of the p-value, but I’m really not sure,” she said.
According to Schroeter, proficiency rates across the state went down in the fall 2013 NECAP testing.
“The whole state went down, and the whole state doesn’t know why,” she said.
Medomak Middle School has seen the biggest change from the benchmark year to the current year, dropping from 78 percent proficient in reading and 66 percent proficient in math in 2011 to 47 percent proficient in reading and 27 percent proficient in math in 2013.
The school’s goals for the current year were 82 percent in reading and 72 percent in math.
“I do know why the middle school has such a deficit,” Schroeter said. “That cohort of kids that took the test in 2011-2012 at the middle school, their scores have always been high. Higher than any other cohort of kids, since third grade. They’ve been performing well all along. And the cohort in the middle school this year – that just got tested – since they were in third grade, their scores have always been lower than anybody’s, as a group.”
“It’s been a pattern, it’s been a trend,” she said.
To help remedy the proficiency rates, Schroeter said she is helping teachers learn how to use data to inform their instruction of students in all areas.
“We’ve recognized that teachers have needed more support on how to use data, and we’re working on that,” she said.
“This is all the students in a school, so this data doesn’t really drill down to a student level. It drills down to a program level,” Schroeter said. “I take this very seriously to look at what we’re doing and why it isn’t working with some kids, and why such high percentages of students.”
The district is also working to hone the teachers’ skills so they can improve student learning, Schroeter said.
One such effort is writing a literacy plan for the district, and implementing what Schroeter called “a comprehensive literacy model for continuous school improvement,” a partnership where teachers are engaging in graduate-level coursework to learn the most current research in teaching, reading, and writing.
Whether or not the district would have ever reached the current NECAP- and SAT-based goals from the Department of Education will never be known, since the state is switching from those tests to a new test called Smarter Balanced in the spring of 2015.
According to Schroeter, the test is based on the Common Core standards, and the biggest shift is in the “cognitive demand” of the test.
“It won’t be at a retrieval level, the test items are going to be developed to really make kids think and reason through the problems, more so than a NECAP,” she said.
The district has been working on that shift already, Schroeter said, by planning how to support teachers shifting to teaching to the “higher level thinking” required by the new test.
Some of that is shifting away from memorization of facts, such as state capitals, and working on skills of application instead, Schroeter said.
“There’s some things you don’t need to memorize anymore,” she said.
