Schools earn 51 test honors

The Newton school district was honored with 51 Standard of Excellence of Awards for the 2008-2009 school year.

Awards are based on scores on standard achievement tests and the school’s Adequate Yearly Progress results.

Students in grades three through eight take the standardized tests, and high school students must meet proficiency standards by the end of their junior year. The schools earn honors based on the amount of improvement seen in students who do not meet standards and those students who achieve exemplary scores.

Schools must meet benchmarks, or targets as educators refer to them, on the

state assessments under the No Child Left Behind Law or risk losing federal funding.

Santa Fe Middle School had the most impressive improvement. The school did not meet AYP in 2007-08 in math, but its students’ scores improved by 9.1 percent for a total of 88.4 percent of students meeting standards in 2008-09.

The school not only made AYP as a building, but achieved Standard of Excellence Awards for all three grades in both math and reading and building-wide.

“Something exciting is that Santa Fe and Slate Creek made AYP target and gathered Standard of Excellence awards. They are working very hard in those buildings,” said Jan Neufled, assistant superintendent of curriculum.

Santa Fe also saw large increase in the test scores among subgroups.

Hispanic students at Santa Fe improved their reading scores by more than 10 percent and math scores by more than 14 percent.

Students on free and reduced lunches increased their math scores by 11.6 percent, and students with disabilities increased their scores by 13.9 percent.

Vicki Adame, Santa Fe principal, said the school has used the data gained from standard achievement tests to identify students who need extra help.

The school has a program called Homework Help Organization, also known as H2O, which meets after school to allow students to get extra help on their school work. The school also has the Fundamental Learning and Exploration program, also known as FLEX, which allows the students to come in before school and get extra help with fundamentals. Students who do not need the extra help with core subjects can participate in enrichment programs.

A computer program used at Santa Fe and across the district called Virtual Prescriptive Learning allows students to take a test similar to the state assessment at the beginning of the year. The program then tells the educator, or “prescribes,” what skills the students need to work on.

Educators at Santa Fe also have tried to stress to the children the importance of the testing process.

“We try to let the kids know why the tests are important to them and important to us and important to the community,” Adame said. “We are interested in tests, but our focus and purpose is not to just prepare them for a test, but to prepare them for life.”

Other schools also saw dramatic jumps in their scores of the 2008-09 school year.

Chisholm

Chisholm Middle School also had significant gains in math, up 8.1 percent in 2008-09 to 92 percent of students achieving standards.

Chisholm also saw dramatic increases among students receiving free and reduced cost lunches with gains of 7.3 percent in reading and 10.3 percent in math.

Chisholm also received Standard of Excellence Awards for all three grades and building wide in both reading and math.

Slate Creek

Slate Creek was the other school in the district that did not meet AYP in 2007-08. The school posted increases of more than 6 percent in both reading and math with 83.3 percent of students achieving standards in reading and 84.4 percent of students achieving standards in math.

More than 20 percent of the English Language Learners achieved standards at Slate Creek.

Slate Creek was honored with two Standard of Excellence Awards, one for fifth-grade reading and one for building-wide writing.

Walton

Walton had a slight decrease in reading scores, but still has almost 95 percent of students making standards in reading. That still puts the students 15 points above the target set for their age group. For the second year in a row, the school had 100 percent of students making standards in math.

Jill Lachenmayr, director of elementary programs, said Walton has fewer students in low-income groups and fewer minority groups than the other schools.

Walton’s agriculture-based program also focuses on project-based learning.

If students need to learn about measurement, they go out and measure everything on the farm.

Walton received Standard of Excellence Awards for all three grades in both reading and math and building wide.

Northridge

Northridge also had modest gains — in the 2 to 3 percent range, — but more than 91 students are meeting standards in math and more than 92 percent of students are achieving standards in reading.

That would put the students 14 points above standards for their age group.

Northridge earned Standard of Excellence honors in grades three through five and building wide in reading and for grades three and five and building wide for math.

South Breeze

South Breeze scores also have been consistently high, with more than 96 percent of its students achieving standards in both reading and math. The percentage of students making standards was the same this year as it was last year in reading and up 1.2 percent in math.

South Breeze earned Standard of Excellence Awards for all three grades and building wide in both reading and math.

Sunset

Sunset had gains of 5.7 percent in reading and 2.8 percent in math. The school saw its biggest increased in students with special needs, with those students increasing their scores by 8.5 percent in reading and 11.4 percent in math.

Sunset was recognized with Standard of Excellence Awards for grades three and four and building wide for both reading and math.

Newton High

High school students are tested differently than the students in the lower grades. Students can take proficiency tests in their freshman, sophomore or junior year.

Newton High School had an increase of 5.5 percent of students meeting standards in 2008-2009 and a slight decrease of 2.2 percent for a total of 78.2 percent students meeting standards in math.

The school achieved AYP and received Standard of Excellence honors in both reading and math.

The big picture

Lachenmayr said as is happening at Santa Fe, educators across the district are using data from standardized tests to target explicit instruction in areas in which the students need extra help.

She also said the district encourages its professionals to work as teams to improve student performance.

The district has a mentoring program for new teachers. New teachers spend two years in the mentoring program, and Lachenmayr said it has increased retention.

The district also is trying to make good use of technology to support instruction, such as having ELMOs, which are a high-tech version of an overhead projector, and Airliners, which are pads students can use to interact with what is being projected onto the screen.

“When you have high quality instruction paired with high quality instructional support, you have a winning model,” she said.

Lachenmayr said district officials hope the schools will continue to excel on state assessments, but this is the first full year the school will be dealing with the $1.4 million in budget cuts due to shortfalls in state funding.

“We are optimistic,” he said. “We will see if the condition can continue. Reduced funding makes educators’ jobs more difficult.”