ASD School Assessment Scores Spur Changes
Armstrong School District board director Paul Lobby asks questions after seeing a presentation on the district’s state assessment scores during last night’s open caucus session.
by Jonathan Weaver
Spring’s state testing in all Armstrong School District schools have warranted a new approach by administrators.
Coordinator of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment (K-6) Dr. Cheryl A. Soloski and Armstrong Junior-Senior High Academic Principal Michael Cominos presented school board members student results compared to the rest of the state last night.
Soloski said School Performance Profiles, as well as teacher/principal effectiveness ratings, were suspended for a year at the district’s five elementary schools - Dayton, Elderton, Lenape and Shannock Elementary and West Hills Primary – due to a more-challenging Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test.
“According to the state Department of Education, the new PSSA’s administered were developed to meet the more-challenging PA standards to better prepare students for college, post-secondary training and the 21st century workforce,” Soloski said.
New cut scores impacted students statewide, as well as at Armstrong schools.
“Especially in mathematics – for example, eighth grade math scores dropped 43 percentage points, from 73 percent proficient/advanced in 2014 to 30 percent proficient/advanced in 2015,” Soloski said. “Sixth and seventh grade math scores also dropped an average of 42 percentage points.”
At all the local schools in most grade levels, students were more proficient or advanced in English Language Arts than mathematics.
State Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera cautioned parents that the lower test scores are not a reflection of poor learning or teaching.
“Successful alignment to these new standards takes time, curriculum development and resources,” Rivera said as part of his statement.
Students continued to be more proficient or advanced in English Language Arts as they attended Kittanning, Ford City or West Shamokin secondary schools.
Out of a 100 score, West Shamokin Junior-Senior High scored the highest in the district with a 75.4 score.
Many of the high marks achieved were due to academic achievement – such as meeting the SAT/ACT college ready benchmark (with 23 seniors scoring at least 1550 on their SAT) and higher-than-average English Language Arts proficiency.
These two factors and more resulted in a nearly 10 percentage point rise than the 2012-13 score.
Ford City Junior-Senior High achieved the second-highest secondary school score at 72.7.
While the college ready benchmark and indicators of academic growth were lower than at West Shamokin, Ford City students received high marks for closing the achievement gap, advanced placement or college credit rates, PSAT participation and attendance.
Ford City’s students also performed better last year than in 2012-13 statistically.
However, Kittanning Senior High students dipped the school’s score slightly to 63.9, and received yellow or open red downward arrows when it came to academic growth, achievement or closing the gap statistics.
Soloski said the district as a whole will look to improve all scores through higher standards and communication, professional development (such as through job coaching and learning communities) and continuing parent and community partnerships in print, online and in person.
A committee of teachers and administrators hope to implement new technology strategies by the 2016-17 school year. Director of Technology & Information Services Tony Grenda has had conversations with administrators during the past six months regarding possible changes.
Cominos hopes it is a seamless transition.
“We’re focusing very strongly on what we teach as well as how we teach,” Cominos said. “We feel that the standards we had written did not prepare our seventh and eighth grade students properly for the PSSA as it was written.”
Acting Coordinator of 7-12 Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. James Gaggini said secondary teachers have already benefited from Mark Weakland, a former ARIN instructor that has consulted in the district for a handful of years.
School Director Paul Lobby noted ‘significant’ percentage changes between schools, and administrators did as well. Soloski said teachers try to monitor student progress over the course of a school year, as often as bi-weekly, through classroom-based assessments.
“It’s a constant journey – we’re constantly trying to revisit the internal data we already have,” Soloski said.
However, she also noted PSSA tests are only one assessment, and said instruction is based on many tools.
Cominos said some students only need a little more assistance through tutoring or seminar periods to become proficient and have a “home-field advantage” during standardized testing.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as a test-taking strategy or a little test anxiety,” Cominos said. “We’re trying to build more-and-more safety nets for our kids, so if start to reach and fail, we’ll be able to catch them and put them back where they need to be.”
A break-down of all School Performance Profiles, along with some elementary statistics, are available online.
(L-R) Director of Technology & Information Services Tony Grenda, Armstrong Junior-Senior High Academic Principal Michael Cominos and Coordinator of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment (K-6) Dr. Cheryl A. Soloski talk to school directors about their game plan after PSSA and School Performance Profile results were released.
Armstrong School District | jweaver December 11, 2015
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By sickofpayingforit, December 11, 2015 @ 9:09 AM
Outstanding. Cominos identified a problem, and is talking about solutions. Management. I am sure he would have no problem being held accountable for a turnaround of the stated weaknesses outlined by the scores. Lets start to turn this ASD into an organization where accountability trumps all, and see what happens. I already know what happens if every department, manager, feels they are accountable for their area of responsibility. Most will rise to the challenge, and some are looking for work. Natural selection. Darwin would be proud.
By scott_starr, December 11, 2015 @ 11:11 AM
It’s obvious that we need a few more Directors of this or that education/books/curriculum to get those scores up! Just add more cost to the Administration and it will all be OK.
Does anyone else see what’s going on ? Change the standards, drop the scores, then teach to the test and get the scores up and tell everyone how wonderful things are going.
By toddluke, December 14, 2015 @ 7:08 AM
I wonder how that score of 63.9 compares to the Lenape score of 66.5 ? I will be interested in the responses to this post.
@Scott; Raise the bar high enough and the student can walk right under it.
Number one thing to improve achievement is teachers. Let the teachers do their jobs and stop evaluating and judging them with a standardized test that was meant to diagnose and prescribe problems. Diagnosis complete. Now, what is the treatment and how will we know it is working?