On 02/28/2022 the Appleton Area School District Board of Education received a mid-year review on how the District was doing on the district score card goals.
Pillar 2 is the District’s “Student Success” pillar and is focused on ensuring “every student is academically, socially, and emotionally successful and graduates ready for college, career and their community.” It is the pillar that encompasses student academic performance.
In the presentation the Leadership Team gave to the Board of Education, various areas on the scorecard were highlighted.
- Yellow – indicated progress was being made to reach the end of year Key Measure/Target
- Pinkish Red – indicated insufficient progress was being made and that if progress continued at the same rate, they would not reach that Key Measure/Target by the end of the year.
- Not Highlighted – Not applicable at this time/data not yet available. For the Pillar 2 metrics, those were areas where data would only be available after students took exams such as the WI Forward Exam and the ACTs.
- Green – indicated the targeted goal had been achieved; this was not used on this scorecard and would only be used at the end of the year.
Rather than go through and screenshot the presentation that was screenshared during the meeting, I went through and highlighted a clean copy of the scorecard in the same areas and with the same colors that the Leadership Team had highlighted it, as this makes for a cleaner, more visually pleasing recap presentation.
Steve Harrison, Assistant Superintendent of Assessment, Curriculum & Instruction, gave this presentation to the Board.
He started out by saying that the goal to increase the overall percentage in both literacy and mathematics of students scoring at or above grade level in grades 5k-8 by 1% was shaded pink which meant they were not on track to achieve that goal by the end of the year.
However, they were on track with the goal of reducing the achievement gap in literacy and mathematics on the i-Ready 5k-8 assessment. That goal specifically was to reduce the achievement gap
- Between Black and White students
- Between English Learners and non-English Learners
- Between Students with Disabilities and Students without Disabilities
They were also on track to meet their goal of increasing the percentage of students in grade 5k-8 who reach their targeted growth goal by the end of the year by 1%.
He then reviewed the i-Ready results in more details, first showing the percentage of student who were scoring at or above grade level.
On the left under the green header were the scores from the most recent 2021-22 winter diagnostic test, in the middle under the purple header were the scores from the 2020-21 winter diagnostic test, and on the right under the pink header were the scores from the spring 2020-21 diagnostic test.
[Although Assistant Superintendent Harrison didn’t go into details, when comparing winter scores to winter scores in was clear that in multiple areas students scores were lower on the 2022 winter assessment than on the 2021 winter assessment. Math scores were lower in every category, although there were some groups that had better reading scores this year than last year at this time. Overall, however, for all K-8 students reading scores were down by 2 points and math down by 1.]
Assistant Superintendent Harrison did point out that the testing environment was different this year (in person) as compared to last year (remote), which was something to factor in when comparing the scores. [He didn’t make any statement as to just how far off the Leadership Team believed the scores last year were.]
Putting it all together, the chart showed what the identified gap was for comparisons between groups and also where those gaps were the year before and at the end of spring. “And so the gaps right now are currently less in comparison to where they were in spring last year, but higher in some cases, that where they were last year in winter.”
He then showed a chart showing the percentage of students who were reaching their targeted growth. “Targeted growth—as a reminder—is the average growth that you would expect within one year for each particular grade level.” AASD’s goal was to increase the percentage of students reaching their targeted growth or their overall typical growth by the end of the year.
This chart also showed the scores for this winter on the left, last winter in the middle, and last spring on the right, and showed scores not only for K-8 as a whole but for English Learners vs Non-English Learners, Students With Disabilities vs Students Without Disabilities, and Black vs White students.
Assistant Superintendent Harrison said, “So definitely a celebration in that we have a greater percentage of students this year reaching their targeted growth compared to last year.” But, again, he reminded the Board about the difference in testing environment. [I would have appreciated some discussion as to the factors that resulted in more students reaching their targeted growth but fewer students actually achieving grade level proficiency.]
The final area they had data for in Pillar 2 was for Teaching Strategies Gold which is an assessment used in 4k that focuses on a variety of objectives, specifically a student’s ability to…
- Understand number concepts and operations
- Explore and describe spatial relationships and shapes
- Compare and measure
He showed a graph that he said showed what the percentage of students meeting those goals in the fall were compared to the percentage of those meeting it in the winter. The target goals were listed on the right-hand side.
There were also three TS Gold literacy objectives as well which were that a student could
- Notice and discriminate rhyme
- Notice and discriminate alliterations
- Notice and discriminate discrete units of sound
This chart also showed the percentage of students meeting or exceeding these expectations in the fall and in the winter and also showed the spring target the District was aiming for.
He finished up by noting that the final goal for Pillar 2 was to increase the 4-year graduation rate, but that is not something that is certified until the following school year once the data is compiled, so they had no information to present regarding that at this time.
Only one Board of Education member had any questions on the information presented. Board member Deb Truyman pointed out that in the middle column of the charts presenting the TS Gold scores there were two numbers listed. She wondered what those numbers meant.
Assistant Superintendent Harrison did not know what the numbers indicated and said he would have to reach out to the 4k Director who compiled the data for clarification.
None of the other Board members had any questions.
View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/dpa2jRJ9fYM
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