Average achievement rates for students in the Little Rock School District and across the state dropped in most grades on the math and literacy sections of the Arkansas Benchmark Exam, according to preliminary results released by the Little Rock district.
The declines in the state’s largest district and in the state overall - which includes the other 238 school districts and 17 charter schools that recently received their results from the April exams - are not a surprise to education leaders.
State and district education leaders attribute the downturn in what was a general upward trend in achievement to the state’s elementary and middle-school teachers having shifted from lessons based on state math and literacy standards to lessons based on new national “common core” standards.
Common-core lessons were put into place in kindergarten through second grades in 2011-12 and in grades three through eight this past school year. Public high schools will incorporate them in the coming school year. But students will continue to take the state Benchmark and Endof-Course exams that are based on the old education standards until schools use new, online assessments rooted in the common-core standards.
Students will take those new tests for the first time in the 2014-15 school year.
“Be prepared for seeing what we call an implementation dip,” Laura Bednar, state Department of Education assistant commissioner for learning services, told the state Board of Educa-tion last week about student performance on state tests this year and in 2014.
Bednar said state and school district leaders need to be assertive in explaining to parents and community leaders what is happening with the transition to common-core lessons, which state education leaders describe as more challenging than the previous curricula.
“I do think next year it will be even more important that we have a clear and concise communications plan to help communities and help people understand what this means and why this is a natural occurrence when you switch to something such as this,” Bednar said.
“You will have pockets of excellence across the state as we always do, but I think our story will be what we projected it would be - you can’t do something of this magnitude and expect [scores] to continue to climb constantly.”
The 2013 results available to date are preliminary. Results from special-education portfolios and from the Endof-Course exams are yet to be included in the results. The state Education Department will release final 2013 achievement results after July 1 to give the districts time to review their test data and identify any glitches.
State achievement rates in math fell this year by as many as 6 percentage points in five of the six Benchmark-tested grades when compared with the previous year. The state literacy scores fell in five of the six tested grades.
The state achievement rates ranged from 65 percent of eighth grade test-takers scoring at proficient or advanced levels in math to 86 percent proficient or better in the third grade. In literacy, state average achievement rates ranged from 73 percent of sixth-graders scoring at proficient or better, to 85 percent of fourth-graders performing at those levels.
Students who score at proficient levels are considered to be achieving at their grade level or demonstrating mastery of the course material.
Little Rock School District achievement rates, which continued this year to trail state averages, declined by as many as 7 percentage points in four of the six tested grades when compared with 2012 results.
The Little Rock results in math ranged from 44 percent proficient or better in eighth grade to 76 percent proficient or better in third grade. In literacy, the averages ranged from 52 percent proficient or advanced in sixth grade, down 6 percentage points from the previous year, to a high of 76 percent proficient or better in fourth grade, down 1 percentage point from 2012.
Dennis Glasgow, the Little Rock School District’s assistant superintendent for accountability, pointed to the transition from state standards to common-core education standards as a likely reason for the downturn in student performance.
“We were true to common core,” Glasgow said of the district’s focus. But he also said an attempt was made to “push in” the teaching of some material not included in the common-core curriculum but subject to state testing.
“That meant we were trying to do two things, and we didn’t really have time to do both curricula,” he said. “In my opinion, the declines are related to that. But hopefullywe will be prepared for the common-core exam when it comes.”
The district’s Benchmark results in math dipped further than the literacy results.
Vanessa Cleaver, the Little Rock district’s director of mathematics, offered examples of the differences between what was taught and what was tested in math this year.
The eighth-grade math classes incorporated more algebra I concepts this year, Cleaver said. Lessons in adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions that were previously taught in eighth grade were pushed down to sixth grade. The material, however, remained part of the eighth-grade Benchmark math exam.
Most geometry concepts previously taught in sixth through eighth grades have been moved into the high school geometry course as a result of the common-core standards, Cleaver said. But some geometry concepts are covered on the Benchmark test. Similarly, measurement concepts are not a large part of the common-core curriculum in the middle school grades, yet they remain on the state test, she said.
“We knew which standards were missing in the common-core curriculum and we tried to embed them during the year, and at the end of the year we made a big push for teachers to cover the materialas much as they could,” Cleaver said. “But it added a lot to their curriculum.”
The results from the Benchmark and End-of-Course exams will be used to determine whether Arkansas public schools met their annual achievement goals.
Most schools and districts will be labeled by the state Education Department as either “achieving” or “needing improvement” based on whether they accomplished the annual goals customized to their schools by the state’s new school accountability system. The U.S. Department of Education approved the accountability system last year as part of the state’s request for a waiver from the terms of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That act calls for all students to achieve at their grade level on state math and literacy tests in 2013-14.
The new accountability system identifies the lowest 5 percent of schools in terms of achievement as priority schools. Additional schools are labeled as “focus” schools because of large achievement disparities between their atrisk students -who are from low-income families, are non-native English speakers or special-education students - and the group of students not in those categories.
Priority and focus schools must carry out improvement plans to raise achievement. Priority schools in particularmust work with state improvement specialists and outside educational consultants or put their districts in jeopardy of being classified as academically distressed and subject to state takeover.
The Little Rock School District has eight of the 48 priority schools. Glasgow said he is optimistic that the state will remove at least one - Wilson Elementary - from the priority list and maybe two schools from the “focus” list once officials finalize state exam results.
Most Little Rock parents will receive their children’s test results when students return to class in August after the summer break, Glasgow said.
Bednar, the assistant education commissioner, told the state Board of Education members that there is still much to do to transition from the state standards and state tests to the common-core standards and new tests, and that there will be some resistance to the changes.
“Number one, it’s difficult,” she said of the transition. “Number two, it is not the norm, and number three there are those who are clearly against college and career readiness in terms of the new standards and new assessments.
“Stay the course,” Bednar advised. “We are on a great path. Keep learning and sharing with each other, and we will get there.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/16/2013