Jay shows strides on ISTEP+

The results are even better than expected.
A month ago Jay Schools superintendent Tim Long told the Jay School Board preliminary results showed the corporation’s elementary and middle school students had posted record ISTEP+ scores for the third straight year. The numbers released Tuesday proved to be even better than previously indicated, with several scores going up after previous undetermined results were finalized.
The corporation ranked eighth in the state in terms of increase in the percentage of students passing language arts and math on the test.
“I’m just really proud of the district,” said Long. “I just know how hard people have worked.
“Our students can perform and they can do great things. We’re very competitive and continuing to improve.
“We’ve done really well and we’re really excited. We had the best scores in the history of Jay Schools.”
Nearly 81 percent of Jay County’s third through eighth graders passed both the math and English language arts portions of the test compared to 72.96 percent last year, an increase of 8.02 percentage points. The biggest gains came at Pennville Elementary and West Jay Middle schools, which saw increases of 17.95 and 15.96 percentage points, respectively.
The local numbers surpassed the state average of 71 percent of students passing both tests.
“Jay School Corporation deserves recognition for their exceptional improvement on ISTEP+ scores in both English and mathematics,” said State Sen. Travis Holdman (R-Markle) in a press release. “The hard work of the administrators, teachers, parents and students has placed them among Indiana’s top 10 most-improved schools for the 2011-12 school year.”
The biggest improvements in Jay Schools came at the seventh-grade level, where students saw gains of more than 10 percentage points in all three categories. Ninety-four percent of seventh-grade students passed the math test, which was the best result for any test at any grade level and showed an improvement of 15 percentage points.
Ninety-three percent of the corporation’s fifth and sixth graders passed the math test, 92 percent of eighth graders passed math and 91 percent of fourth graders passed English language arts. Leading the way among the individual schools were East Elementary with 96.43 percent of students passing the English language arts test and Pennville Elementary with 94.87 percent passing the math test.
Jay Schools assistant superintendent Wood Barwick said he thinks use of the Acuity and mCLASS assessment programs has benefited students. He also noted that having more days of instruction also was a factor, as the corporation did not miss any days of school because of weather this year after being closed for 12 days in both 2009-10 and 2010-11.
But mostly he credited the improvement to “good teaching, good students.”
“Students are engaged in the assessment programs,” Barwick added. “Everyone is taking the assessments seriously. … Parents supported it … It takes everyone really.”[[In-content Ad]]