BY PAUL SLOTH
Journal Times | Posted: Friday, May 30, 2008 12:00 am
RACINE - The results are in. Racine Unified School District students continue to struggle to do well on state standardized tests, according to data released Thursday.
Unified sixth-graders were the only students - as a whole grade level - to meet their targets on the reading portion of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exams, according to the district. The WKCEs are the standardized tests administered annually by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Students in only three grade levels - fourth, sixth and seventh - met their targets on the math portion of the test, which, like the reading test, is given to students in grades 3 through 8 and again in 10th grade, district officials said Thursday.
"Clearly not something we're pleased with," said Steve Miller, Unified's director of standards, assessment and accountability. "Everybody … would love to see, overall … higher performance by our kids. We're certainly doing everything we can to move in that direction."
Poverty's negative effect
Students in all Unified schools, at a variety of grade levels, continue to struggle with the tests, most notably minority and low-income students.
Minority and low-income students throughout the state continue to struggle on the WKCEs. Districts statewide continue to struggle to close the achievement gap between minority and low-income students and their white classmates, according to the Department of Public Instruction.
Poverty rates are growing throughout the state. In state public schools, 33.9 percent of students are low-income, determined by the number who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. By that measure, nearly 43 percent of Unified students are low-income.
"The adverse effects of poverty work against our students and their learning," said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. "Improving achievement in our schools requires shared responsibility among teachers and families as well as business and elected leaders to create communities that support academic achievement."
Random and puzzling
The random performance by Unified students on the state tests has district officials scratching their heads. While some schools saw huge increases in their students' performance, at certain grade levels, others saw large drops and others saw no change in test scores from one year to the next.
"It's hard, at this point anyway, to nail down a coherent pattern to what's going on there," said Jack Parker, Unified's interim superintendent. "We're even seeing it in places where that isn't the history. That's the other part of the randomness. The history isn't consistent."
In addition to being tested in reading and math, students in fourth, eighth and 10th grade are tested in language arts, science and social studies.
For the past six years, Unified has seen a fairly steady decline in reading scores among fourth, eighth- and 10th-graders.
The consistent downward trend among middle and high school students appears stable, based on the 2007 test results, which Unified officials see as a positive sign.
Student performance on tests, reported in proficiency categories, is used to determine the adequate yearly progress of students at the school, district and state levels, under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The state determines proficiency levels based on test results of students who attended the same school for a full year prior to the year they were tested. Unified officials did not have the number of district students who did not meet the state's definition.
Schools still struggle
Every school in the district continues to struggle to some degree with student performance on the WKCEs. The district has long struggled to get out of the shadow of comparable school districts throughout the state that continually outperform Unified on state tests.
Unified has finished at or near the bottom on state tests among 10 comparable districts, according to the Public Policy Forum's annual comparative analysis.
This school year,
NCLB required 74 percent of students in all public school districts
to be proficient or advanced in reading. The law requires 58
percent of students to be proficient or advanced in math.
This is the first time in three years that the federal government has raised the "annual measurable objective," the target for students. The intended goal of NCLB - an often-criticized piece of education legislation - is to have 100 percent of public school students proficient in reading and math by the 2013-14 school year.
"School districts across the state will find themselves in less than comfortable positions at least for some of their schools," Miller said. "Because as the bar goes up it becomes increasingly difficult, not only for us, but for schools across the state."
An estimated 10,000 Unified students took the WKCE tests in the fall of 2007.
Defining proficiency
Proficient and advanced are two of five proficiency levels used in the Wisconsin Student Assessment System, which covers the WKCEs and Wisconsin Alternate Assessment. Basic, minimal performance and pre-requisite skill are the remaining three levels.
An estimated 1 percent of Unified students took the WAA, which is an alternative test for students who couldn't take the WKCE, including students with certain disabilities and students with limited English proficiency.
According to the state, "proficient" students are those who demonstrate competency in the academic knowledge and skills tested. "Advanced" students are those who demonstrate in-depth understanding of academic knowledge.
Nearly 435,000 public school students in Wisconsin took the WKCEs in November 2007.
At the state level, 82 percent of elementary students scored proficient or advanced in reading and 76 percent in math; in middle schools, 85 percent in reading and 76 percent in math; and at the high school level, 75 percent in reading and 69 percent in math.
Test results for all Wisconsin school districts will be available Friday morning on the Department of Public Instruction's Web site,
http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/sig/index.html
under the data analysis section.