Sean C. Morgan
Newly released state test scores show Sweet Home School District has continued to lose ground, generally lagging behind statewide statistics in the number of students who demonstrated proficiency in English language arts and math for 2016-17.
The district also lagged behind the statewide percentage in science in state assessment test results released Thursday, Sept. 14.
In the state’s report, students scoring 3 or 4 on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test are considered proficient.
Statewide, the number of students showing proficiency declined a little across the board, with slight gains in seventh-, eighth- and 11th-grade math and no change in fourth-grade math and seventh- and 11th-grade reading.
Sweet Home School District figures showed larger swings in some areas, with about 38 percent of third-graders – 9 percent more than in 2015-16, demonstrating proficiency in math.
Fourth-graders lost 10 points in English language arts, with 28 percent showing proficiency. At the junior high, 39 percent, a decline of 9 percent, tested proficient in English language arts. In the fifth grade, just 22 percent were proficient in math, a decline of 9 percent from a year earlier.
Some 69 percent of high school juniors were proficient in English language arts, an increase of 11 percent, and 33 percent of the same class, an increase of 6 percent, were proficient in math. Among Sweet Home fourth graders, about 33 percent were proficient in math, an increase of 4 percent from the previous year.
Eighth grade math showed no change in math, with 34 percent testing proficient.
At other levels in the third through eighth and 11th grades, the number of students testing as proficient decreased by 1 percent to 5 percent.
“Good gains for our third graders in math,” said Supt. Tom Yahraes, who became superintendent last year. “We’ve had some great successes there. Also the High School in both categories, good gains there, lifting up achievement from last year’s levels.”
At the school level, Yahraes said, Hawthorne Elementary made gains overall, with 40 percent of its students testing proficient in English language arts, an increase of 10 percent. The school had a 9-percent gain in math, with 35 percent of students testing proficient.
Overall in English language arts, Sweet Home had about 40.6 percent of students test proficient, while statewide, 53.6 percent were proficient.
Statewide, 40.8 percent of all students were proficient on the math test, while in Sweet Home, 32.4 percent tested proficient.
In science, which uses the OAKS test, the state had 61.4 percent testing as proficient. In Sweet Home, 59.2 percent were proficient.
In Sweet Home, among all fifth graders, 66 percent were proficient. In the eighth grade, 53 percent tested proficient, and in the 11th grade, 62 percent were proficient, ahead of the statewide figure, 53 percent.
“In the coming months,” Yahraes said. “We’ll get more data breaking down more of this information.”
That will be part of the upcoming release of school and district report cards.
It will compare Sweet Home to similar schools demographically, Yahraes said. The overall statewide results incorporate wealthier school districts. In similar districts, Sweet Home is more competitive.
The information will show academic achievement, academic growth and group growth, he said. “These are the raw data, which does not factor in Sweet Home’s subcategories and demographics where we’ve had a lot of success.”
The district spent the last year making large structural changes, Yahraes said. The most obvious is returning to the five-day week after four years on the four-day week, a period where scores have been declining.
While a Google search will reveal a lot of research show a negligible difference in academic achievement between a four-day and five-day week, Yahraes said, a growing body of research shows that in districts with lower incomes, it does make a difference.
Wealthier communities have more for them to do, YMCA or parks and recreation programs, for example, Yahraes said.
With five days of “great programming,” Yahraes said, it means students have only two days to forget what they’ve learned. The five-day schedule banishes the three-day instructional slide.
“We’re back in what I feel is the range of normal continuous instruction for kids,” he said. That’s 171 days of school compared to 147 – two of which were snow days last year.
The new five-day schedule gives students more continuous instruction time, Yahraes said. With it, the elementary school day is significantly different, with daily prep time for teachers. Across the district, early releases every Wednesday created time for professional development.
The early releases give teachers 35 days a year to focus on student learning and achievement through professional learning communities, Yahraes said. “Weekly, we’re talking about reviewing student data, looking at our assessments and using our assessments to inform our instruction.
“In Sweet Home, we will continuously improve. This is feedback for us. It’s a summative assessment of how our kids are performing. We want to use it and analyze it to improve our instruction.”
It will take time, and Yahraes suggests patience.
“If you look at the trend over the last 10 years, it took awhile for us to get off the mark,” Yahraes said. “It’s going to take effort and renewed focus to reverse the trend lines. We are perfectly poised. A lot of last year was setting ourselves up to forge forward this year. Everything is there for us to achieve. It’s a great time to be in Sweet Home.
“This just makes us roll up our sleeves and work harder for our community. We have the perfect community to be able to do the best we can to help every child achieve their dreams. Yeah, this is sobering, but we need this feedback in order to improve.”