Heartland AEA rep explains systems analysis — quickly

Heartland Area Education Agency Regional Director Chris Pierson acknowledged he’s had about 15 months to crunch the data he presented Monday.

“And I gave all that to you guys on the board in about 26 minutes,” he said, smiling.

Pierson, speaking as the invited guest to the Newton Community School District board of education’s monthly Board Learning Workshop, presented a dizzying set of test score trends and other data in his short time at the podium. While he didn’t expect the seven board members to digest and retain every single statistic, he managed to drive the point home that numbers can be used to find positive and negative trends among students.

Pierson said he wanted to help the board understand performance and trends in Iowa Assessment data. While the board looks at that data regularly and even has staff devoted to looking at trends and addressing areas of concern, Pierson used a multitude of charts and graphs to show the district’s challenges and progress related to its assessment goals.

The regional director said the district’s mission statement is “one of his favorites.”

It states “The Newton Community School District will do whatever it takes to ensure all students learn to think, innovate and succeed.”

One saying he placed in all capital letters was “You can’t intervene your way out of a core problem,” meaning students who need intervention receive it in addition to core instruction, making the intervention “additive, and not supplantive.”

Pierson used a graphic called the “80-15-5” model, which has 80 percent or more of all students benefiting from universal core instruction, in an ideal school district. Supplemental services, in moderate form, would be used to help fewer than 15 percent meet core requirements, with fewer than 5 percent requiring intense intervention.

One of the main trends he spotted was in simple cohort assessment data, which follows a group of students as they move up grade by grade. Using Newton High School’s graduating class of 2016 — using its most recent data from the Iowa Assessments taken as juniors in 2015-16 —Pierson showed the class had almost 80 percent of its students make reading proficiency in the third grade, drop to near 60 percent in the eighth grade, and returning to near 80 percent by the junior-year assessments.

Pierson showed a similar swoon for the Class of 2016 in the late elementary and middle-school assessments in match.

He also showed score gaps between low-SES students (from households with low socio-economic status) and non-SES students.

His main conclusions included achievement growth in scores being flat, with are dips in grades 4,5, 8 and, and there are gaps between low-SES and IEP students (ones with individual educational plans) and students with neither of those designations.

“Do we know students are learning, or do we think they’re learning,” he said. “We want to know they’re learning.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com