[Update: during the AGR report to the Board of Education, an AASD employee incorrectly equated a student reaching 100% of their targeted growth with achieving proficiency. Some of the actual proficiency rates for the District are similar to the percentage of AGR students who reached their targetted growth, but some are better. I emailed back and forth with AASD Assistant Superintendent Nan Bunnow and conversed with her via telephone regarding the i-Ready scores and what they mean. You can read that conversation here.]
As posted last week, 40-60% of Appleton Area School District kindergarteners – 3rd graders at Achievement Gap Reduction schools did not achieve proficiency in reading and math skills. Additionally, the kindergarteners – 3rd graders at Title 1 schools and non-Title 1/non-AGR schools didn’t seem to score particularly better than the AGR students. It looks like the highest rate of proficiency achieved by any grade was 2nd grade non-Title 1/non-AGR students, almost 70% of whom reached proficiency. 3rd grade non-Title 1/non-AGR students also cracked the 60% rate. For all other grades across all school-types proficiency rates never rose above 60% and several were down in the 40%.
The ramifications of this really weren’t discussed at the Board of Education meeting in which these results were presented. I contact Assistant Superintendent Nan Bunnow and first asked to confirm if I was reading the charts correctly.
She confirmed that I was and provided the actual numbers of K-3 students at AGR schools who reached their targeted growth for the 2021-22 school year.
I then emailed her back and said that the number of students reaching their targeted growth seemed low and would result in serious problems that would compound over future years. I asked why the high rate of students falling behind had not been explicitly discussed with the Board of Education and also was it possible to get that many kids caught up and if so what was the plan.
She did not respond until after I posted the recap of the AGR 2021-22 Achievement Gap Reduction End-of-Year Report. She said:
The AGR performance objectives support the key measures/targets on the AASD scorecard related to IReady. The 2021-2022 AASD Scorecard results were shared and discussed with the board at their June 30, 2022, work session. The 2022-2023 AASD scorecards will reflect the prioritized action steps that the district, departments, and buildings will take to get kids caught up and, in turn, achieve the key measure/target related to iReady on the scorecard.
This was the first year we used iReady as our AGR data point. As we did not have a baseline, we selected 90% as the target, knowing it was a reach but wanted to set the bar high. Now that we have the baseline this year, each of the AGR building will have a personalized Kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3 goal of increasing the percent of students who reached their targeted growth by 1% next year, which mirrors the district scorecard. We also will be tracking the % of students at or above grade level by grade (example- K to K) and cohort (example- K to grade 1), seeking a 1% increase from 2022 to 2023.***
I emailed her back and said:
Thank you for getting back to me. The baseline that’s been established is that 42% of 3rd graders and 45% of 2nd graders can’t read proficiently and 47% of 3rd graders and 50% of 2nd graders are not proficient at math. It seems very serious that 40-50% of students at these lower elementary levels are not achieving proficiency. How are these students going to be able to competently learn in the higher grade levels when they haven’t even mastered the lower grade skills?
I also don’t understand how a 1% improvement per year on these numbers is going to be enough to help these specific students. It may help students 40 years down the road, but it looks like these students right now have already fallen so far behind at such an early stage that they will struggle for the rest of their time in school. Is it even possible to get this many students back on track?
Finally, is a baseline of 40-50% of students not competently mastering the early grade level building blocks of basic reading and math normal? Has the number of AASD students achieving proficiency at elementary level skills always been this low?***
That email was sent on 07/19/2022. As of this posting I have not received a response, but I will update accordingly should that change.
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