March 18, 2024

Assessment test scores a complex NCSD topic

State to push back third-grade pass-fail until 2017-18

The replacement of the No Child Left Behind Act with the Every Student Succeeds Act is driving a few major changes in assessing reading skills in Iowa schools — but so are budget limitations.

That was the basic message presented by Newton Community School District Director of K-8 Curriculum Jim Gilbert when he spoke to the NCSD Board of Education at Monday’s meeting.

The biggest change, according to Gilbert, is the Iowa Department of Education pushing back the retention requirement — for third-graders who don’t meet proficiency standards — to the 2017-18 school year.

“The state decided to go to Smarter Balance for statewide assessments, which was all well and good until the legislature realized it was going to cost money for infrastructure, as it’s online set of assessments,” Gilbert said. “In the meantime, a lot of lobbying was done by the Iowa Testing Center, which didn’t want to lose its money. There’s also been much debate as to whether the (currently used) Iowa Assessments align with the Common Core.”

During the year leading up to the 2017-18 school year, Gilbert said, a state task force will be putting together a plan to submit to the U.S. Department of Education specifying math, reading and science goals and how to reach them.

The third-grade retention rule is now set to be implemented in 2017-18, meaning that year’s Iowa third-graders will be the first ones required to reach math, science and reading assessment proficiency standards in order to advance to the fourth grade.

The other important news about this delay is the Schools in Need of Assistance and Districts in Need of Assistance — SINA and DINA — won’t affect any Iowa schools in 2016-17.

“Everything is basically on hold for one year,” Gilbert said. “What might end up happening is these punitive designations will be replaced with more of a positive incentive. So while Thomas Jefferson (sanctioned as a SINA-1 school) won’t technically be off the list, there isn’t the letter home to parents or school-of-choice or supplemental stuff have to be generated by us this year.”

Gilbert said Newton is taking several steps to ensure all students meet proficiency — especially 2017-18 third-graders. Super-Reader, JumpStart, Success-3, are examples of these programs.

The data from this spring’s Iowa Assessments won’t be used to sanction or reward any districts or schools. However, the data from those tests — given to students in the third through the 11th grades — is still useful is spotting patterns, Gilbert said.

For example, this fall’s Berg Middle School eighth-graders have not scored higher than 76 percent in any of the past five years on Iowa Assessments, but in math, that class has dipped slightly before scoring 82 percent in the spring of 2016.

Newton High School’s graduating class of 2017 has had modest success in bringing up its reading scores over the past five years and has improved slightly in math. However, that class only reached 80 percent once in reading in that span, and was never higher than 73 percent proficiency in math.

“It kind of goes flat at 11th grade, and it does that all across the state, too,” Gilbert said. “I don’t know if kids just kind of poo-poo the tests a little more in 11th grade, but ninth and 10th-grade years are really something. Ninth grade is strong; 10th grade is strong.”

Gilbert said the Newton emphasis in assessments is based on three local goals:

• Continue to build and maintain a core curriculum that gets 85 percent of all students to meet proficiency.

• Decrease the assessment score gap between students with learning disabilities and those without.

• Decrease the assessment score gap involving students from low socio-economic status households.

Gilbert said he feels the district is moving in the right direction. He said the district needs to think of the 80 percent as a minimum, rather than a high mark to be reached occasionally.

“We see sixth grade from dismal (proficiency percentages in the 60s) in 2012, and now we’re at 80,” Gilbert said. “We need to now think of that as a baseline, and go up from here.”

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