I have had a chance to write up the i-Ready math results which were presented at the 11/09/2020 Board of Education worksession. (To Review how the i-Ready assessment works and see the Reading results, go here.)
Steve Harrison was doing the presenting. There were slight differences between the number of kids who took the math assessment vs those who took the reading assessment because some were able to take one but not the other, but the completion rate was still quite high.
This slide shows the historical national testing norms as compared to this year’s results of students tested nationwide in school, in a blended in-school/virtual manner, and fully virtually. Of note is that the results of the students who tested virtually are markedly better than that of students who tested in-person, though seems in line with historic national norms.
The next slide shows AASD’s results as compared to the national norms. As with reading, they performed markedly better than students who did the assessment in-person.
Both of these slides break out AASD’s results by grade and compare them to the national historical norms and the 2020 national results of students who took it virtually. Taken at face value they show AASD students performing in line or better than the national historic norms. [I find the Kindergarten results, in particular, to be hysterically funny. I have heard that a shocking amount of kindergarteners were testing up to first and even second grade levels. It seems very evident to me that kindergarteners as well as 1st and 2nd graders got a lot of help from their parents. Additionally, the amount of red (i.e. students who are at least two grades behind) is alarming. Even at the second grade level 17% of students are being failed by AASD’s education system and it only grows from there until in 6 – 8 grade 30%+ are 2 or more levels behind. When nearly ⅓ of your students are failing, that speaks of systemic deficiencies with your educational model.]
This slide shows AASD students’ performance within the different mathematical domains the test measured and compares their results to national historical norms. The domains were “Numbers and Operations”, “Algebra and Algebraic Thinking”, “Measurement and Data”, and “Geometry”. Steve Harrison put boxes around the areas where they were either at or below the national average. 5th grade is below the national norms in every single one of those areas–markedly so in “Measurements and Data” and “Geometry”. Steve identified “Numbers and Operations” and “Measurements and Data” as both needing more attention; however, he would focus on “Measurements and Data” because the discrepancy between the scores is greater than that for “Numbers and Operations”. [I don’t see why AASD can’t focus on both.]
As mentioned in the previous post about i-Ready, 5 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 1 charter school piloted the i-Ready assessment last year. 3,026 students at those 8 schools took the test in 2019 and 3,410 students at those same schools took the test in 2020. Steve broke out the results from those schools to compare the results from last year to this year.
Just as with the slide giving the results for the reading portion of the assessment, this slide is utterly worthless because there’s a giant data error on it. The 2019 percentages only add up to 85% total whereas the 2020 percentages add up to 115%. There’s no way to know where the error is or whether the ratios shown visually are in any way accurate even if the percentages listed are wrong.
There then followed 3 slides which compared each grade’s performance in 2019 to their performance in 2020. The 2019 kindergarteners are compared to themselves as 1st graders in 2020. The 2019 first graders are compared to themselves as 2020 2nd graders, etc.
As with the reading results, these show the number of children who are two or more grade levels behind increasing with each subsequent year until, by the time they’re in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, 30% of students are failing. [This seems unconscionable to me–all the more so because these results don’t seem to be caused by schools being closed but we’re in fact happening back in 2019 prior to the pandemic.]
The Key Takeaways Steve Harrison took from the math assessment results were that (a) district results in math are at or above the national average when compared to national data for fall 2020, (b) Fall i-Ready results do not suggest a large discrepancy in math results between AASD 5k-8 students and national sample, (c) AASD will continue to gather additional data beyond i-Ready results.
He then opened things up for feedback from the Board.
Gary Jahnke noticed that things seem to start out really well in kindergarten then decrease until by grade 5 four boxes were below the national norm. He wondered what the year before and the year before that looked like, in terms of those norms.
Per Steve, the information being shared in this presentation will be able to be expanded upon not only in the Winter and Spring assessments but year to year going forward.
Kristine Sauter wondered if parents’ and grandparents’ comfort level with “new math” and new terminology might be impacting overall learning since kids sometimes go to their family for help may not be able to get help if their family doesn’t understand how schools teach math.
She also noticed the red area increasing from year to year and wondered if that was due to certain groups of students. She wanted to dig into the information more to see what was impacting those red levels.
Barry O’Connell echoed Gary’s thought somewhat in wondering if the 5th grade score reflected the 4th grade teaching they received since when they received the test they had only been in 5th grade for 2 months.
He also pointed out that there is a significant difference between AASD’s overall results and the national norms. He wondered if AASD’s demographics were different than those of the national norms. Is i-Ready being used across the board or is it being skewed to specific districts?
Steve thought that was a good question, but had no answer.
As mentioned in the write-up for the reading results, Jim Bowman was really bothered by the reds. He said that they’ve looked at this before, but he thinks they need to put a more intensive effort into supporting the reds. He suspects that much of that effort is outside the classroom. He thought there were two areas that should be focused on. (1) Students should be helped to see job opportunities earlier in life and (2) there should be efforts to increase academic family engagement through parent teacher teams such as Lincoln Elementary School is doing.
Deb Truymann wondered if some of the low scores in 6th through 8th grade are the result of that being the age where kids tend to not take anything seriously. She thought it would be interesting to compare these i-Ready results to how they seem to be performing for their teachers and on other assessments.
Leah thought that the math results revealed more areas of opportunity than the reading results did [a euphemistic way of putting things]. She wondered if AASD teachers need to get better at teaching the curriculum they’ve been given or if the scores are the result of limitations with the curriculum. She has heard over the years that there’s less room for math facts with AASD’s current curriculum but kids need fluency in those numbers and operations in order to build high level concepts.
She mentioned a concept called “educational mismatch” between what schools can offer and what students need if they are significantly behind grade level; as the gap widens, it’s harder to meet everyone’s needs in a classroom setting. There’s a paper called “Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes for Disadvantaged Youth” that she wanted to share with everyone. It was a large scale study to address math achievement that she thought was very promising. (https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/not-too-late-improving-academic-outcomes-disadvantaged-youth)
Barry stated that math and reading are two very important skills, but there are kids who are in the red and they often stay in the reds. He believed we need to make sure these students have avenues of success that don’t depend on their math achievement. Many of the kids who struggle achievement wise shouldn’t just themselves by their achievement but they do. Math skills are important, but they’re not everything that goes into a human being.
Kay Eggart pointed out that the red is showing a composite figure and it’s not broken down into domains. She was curious how the red would break down within the district. Would it reveal domains they could focus on.
You can view the entire meeting here: https://youtu.be/G0-jMU3PX_s
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