THE JOURNAL & TOPICS NEWSPAPERS | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2008
Student 'Ends' Not Over Yet
By DWIGHT ESAU
Journal Reporter
Several years ago, Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 decided to develop a broad range of desired outcomes they wanted all of their students to achieve in grades K-8.
They called them educational ends, or long-term goals.
They developed a long list of assessment tools to measure how well students and teachers were doing to achieve these ends.
Today, they believe they are about 2/3 of the way along toward calling this program successful.
Diane Betts, assistant superintendent for student learning in the district, provided an eight-page report to the board of education t his week outlining the program's progress and plans for the future. The board was scheduled to discuss it with her at a meeting Tuesday night (Oct. 14).
In essence, this program establishes an entirely new and comprehensive assessment system within the district for measuring student progress over time.
Educational ends are defined for language arts, math, foreign language, music, physical education, science, social studies, health, visual arts, critical thinking, and social/emotional skills.
A district scorecard system has been developed to communicate data regarding achievement of the ends.
Betts reported this week that in 2007-08, 62%, or nearly two-thirds, of district scorecards of the 117 assessments in all curricular areas were on target to meet ends standards. In the previous school year of 2006-07, a total of 56% of all scorecards were on target.
For the current school year 2008-09, Betts and the district's Assessment Literacy Leadership Team (ALLT) are recommending that a goal of 70% of all educational ends assessment results on target be set for measuring achievement toward the desired target level. "The team constructed the improvement goal to be realistic and achievable, yet lofty enough to require improvement efforts across the system," Betts said.
"One can argue that all scorecards should be in the desired target range, but there are only so many goal areas that a system can focus on at any given time" she said. "We need to direct our energy on specific areas of improvement that we believe will result in the greatest level of overall benefit to our students.
"Change and improvement do not happen quickly but are part of a process that takes place over time and require consistent support."
An example of one group of educational ends in language arts is contained in her report. They state that all students will 1) become proficient readers (as measured by reading fluency tests), 2) will read for both information and pleasure (as measured by student surveys), 3) will be able to effectively communicate in writing for a variety or audiences and purposes (as measured by the state ISAT standardized test), and 4) will be able to speak effectively and listen with understanding (as measured by a district test for speaking and listening proficiency).