Local ISTEP scores a 'wow' (12/20/03)

Judge Haynes Elementary School principal Trent Paxson doesn’t hesitate when asked how he felt after receiving the ISTEP results for his third and sixth grade students.

“Wow!”

Students at Judge Haynes were not unlike a majority in the Jay School Corporation, which showed solid improvement over scores from years past. Nine of 10 schools registered improvements over the percentage of students passing the test in the fall of 2002, and some schools showed dramatic increases.

It was the Judge Haynes third graders that showed the most dramatic improvement — jumping 29 percentage points over the number of students that passed the English section last year, and a 16 percentage point increase in math scores compared to those just a year ago.

“It was a major jump over what they scored last year,” Paxson said. “I truly believe the teachers have worked exceptionally hard in increasing the scores in math and language arts. The teachers really worked last spring and again this fall getting those kids ready and test-savvy.”

Bloomfield Elementary School’s sixth graders also registered a major increase in the district. English scores jumped 26 percentage points — from 68 percent in 2002 all the way up to 94 percent passing this fall. The math scores for the sixth graders showed similar improvement, with 97 percent passing compared to 83 percent last year.

“We have a lot of tradition and pride here. We’ve scored well for many years,” Bloomfield principal Dan Hoffman said. “So those kids take that as a challenge, and they want to do well, and they want to do better that what was previously (scored).”

Only two classes in the entire district did not show improvement over last year’s test scores. General Shanks Elementary School third graders had a 5 percentage point decrease in English — but were still well above the state average with 81 percent passing — and a 6 percentage point decline in the number of students passing the math section.

Jay County High School 10th graders had 61 percent passing English and 64 percent passing the math section, which is below the state average and a significant decrease compared to 2002 results. The state average is 67 percent passing English and 69 percent in mathematics. At a school board meeting Dec. 15, Jay Schools Supt. Barbara Downing said administrators plan to go into “attack mode” in order to find out what needs to be done differently to improve the scores, a point reiterated by JCHS principal Wood Barwick.

“I wasn’t happy to see the scores. I thought we had everything in place to maintain what the juniors had done last year,” he said. Barwick also indicated he has already begun analyzing last year’s remediation program, and changes will be made accordingly. Sophomores need to pass the exam in order to graduate, and those who did not pass are provided with four more opportunities to pass the test. “None of us are pleased with what we saw, and we’re going to do more. And we’re not going to do (remediation) the same way because we didn’t get the results we were looking for.”

Pennville Elementary School third graders have consistently kept their scores above the state average for the past five years. This year, a 17 percentage point jump from 2002 helped boost math scores to 94 percent passing. And English scores — which have remained at above 80 percent passing since 1999 — kept up the pace with 88 percent making the grade.

One school that has shown steady improvement over the past five years is Westlawn Elementary School. In 1999, there were only 55 percent of students who made the grade in the English section of the test. A lot has changed since then, as the school received a I-READ grant in the spring of 2002 and has placed literacy education at the forefront. The results are evident, as the percentage of students passing jumped to 76 percent last fall, and finally up to 85 percent this year.

“We were pleased, of course,” Westlawn principal Gary Storie said. “We really believe that if we approach teaching literacy in the right way — getting kids to learn strategies, overcome their problems and to be critical thinkers — the test scores will take care of themselves.

“It’s not the test score we aspire to. It’s getting these kids to learn.”

While there has been an intense focus on reading at Westlawn, the largest increase from a year ago was in the math scores, where 98 percent of third graders passed — a 17 percentage point increase from 2002. “I would say that was somewhat of a surprise,” Storie said of the high math scores. “I’ve talked with other principals, and we believe there is a correlation between the two. When kids do better in language arts and reading, they also do better in math.”[[In-content Ad]]