Story posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009
All Dist. 64 Schools Meet State Standards
By DWIGHT ESAU Journal & Topics Reporter
Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 educators measure student learning and progress in 10 ways.
These include state-mandated standardized tests, student portfolios, parent-student-teacher conferences, classroom performance assessments, family factors, report cards, etc.
One of the methods is the state-mandated Illinois Standards Achievement Tests (ISAT) which measure reading, math, writing, and science progress in grades 3-8.
As usual in District 64, the district got mostly good news about its students' scores in ISAT tests taken last spring. The best news was that all of the district's seven buildings met adequate yearly progress (AYP) as required by the No Child Left Behind federal standards and the Illinois State Board of Education.
"We continue to perform well on this ISAT, the strong majority of our students continue to meet or exceed the Illinois state standards," said Larry Sorensen, director of technology planning and assessments. "In some areas, we improved slightly on our already high scores of a year or two before."
Generally speaking, however, the district's scores remained stable in math, reading, and science when compared to the past year.
* In math, 92.4% of local students at all grade levels now score in the "meets or exceeds" category.
* In reading, 89.6% of students meet or exceed.
* In science, 93.2% of fourth and seventh graders meet or exceed.
* In writing, however, 73.4% of third, fifth, sixth, and eighth graders score in the meets or exceeds category.
"One area of decline over the previous year was in fifth grade writing," Sorensen said. "The percent of students scoring in the 'meets or exceeds' category decreased from 85% in 2008 to 73% in 2009. We have shared this data with Language Arts Curriculum Specialist Lisa Bulzoni and she and the Language Arts committee now are examining it to see where the specific points of decline are."
Some of the district's best scores are in the third and fourth grades. In third grade reading, for example, 52.3% of students exceed state standards and 39% meet them. In math, 61.2% of third graders exceed state standards, and 35% meet them. In fourth grade math, 60% of students exceed state standards, and 41% meet them.
In most of the other categories and grade levels, the percent of students who exceed state standards is less than those that meet them.
In the last four years, the percent of District 64 students who test below state standards in math, reading, and science has dropped dramatically in most grade levels.
"We got better in most categories, in many of them the 'exceeds' numbers went up, that's what I look for," said Board of Education President John Heyde. "AYP standards are getting tougher, and we are keeping pace with them so far. The eighth grade scores are a bit stagnant, we maybe need to look at that grade level a bit more."
The Illinois State Board of Education uses these ISAT scores as the sole test indicator to report that schools and districts are making adequate yearly progress.
This year, the state goal is that 70% of students must score in the combined "meets or exceeds" category in math or reading.
This standard will increase annually until it reaches 100% in the year 2014, under this ambitious program.
Sorensen also said District 64's ISAT scores are near the top average of those in 10 surrounding school districts in the north and northwest suburbs.
Speak Out!
Comments are edited first by Journal staff before running in print and appearing online.