U46 gets peek at mixed state test results

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Updated: November 27, 2011 12:45PM

ELGIN — Statewide results of the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests are to be made available Monday, but in the meantime, the Elgin School District U46 board got a glimpse this week of what to expect.

Overall, growth — improvement on the number of students meeting or exceeding state standards — is stagnant in grades three, four and five, said Margo Schmitt, coordinator of assessment for U46’s elementary students told the board Monday night.

However, 14 of the district’s elementary schools had enough students meet or exceed state standards for reading to hit state-mandated goals, and 16 schools increased the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on math tests.

Students in Illinois take the standardized tests over several days each spring. Those results are used to determine whether the school district is meeting its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals, part of the now-nine-year-old federal No Child Left Behind Act, Schmitt said.

U46 saw a leap in the number of students hitting the AYP goals in grade six — a trend that seems to be the same for many schools with kindergarten-through-grade-six students, Schmitt said.

“We see throughout the state, in K-6 schools, grade six does better than their three-through-five counterparts,” Schmitt said. That may be because sixth-graders are more comfortable in their environments, she said.

While this one battery of tests determines whether a school — and its students — are making adequate yearly growth, it is not the only test used to determine where a student is in his or her own learning, she said. The district uses the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test three times a year to see what an individual child knows. That data has a quicker turnaround and can be used by teachers to help guide their classrooms, Schmitt said.

Overall, she added, the district is seeing pockets of growth in both ISAT reading and math scores, but it is hard to tell if those numbers are statistically significant, she added.

For the spring 2011 ISAT test, however, the district saw 68 percent of its third-graders meeting or exceeding state standards in reading, 69 percent of its fourth-graders, 71 percent of its fifth-graders and 84 percent of those students in the sixth grade.

Math numbers are stronger, with 86 percent of both third- and fourth-graders meeting or exceeding standards in 2011, 83 percent of fifth-graders and 85 percent of its sixth grade students.

Schmitt also had math and reading scores for the past five years, broken down by ethnicity. For grade six math, for example, scores have remained consistent over the past three years with no real statistical changes. She did point out that at Hawk Hollow Elementary School in Bartlett, 100 percent of Hispanic students made adequate yearly progress in math.

Now that the district’s ISAT results are available, they will now be loaded into a computer system for teachers to use. Parents have also received copies of how their children did as well.