ACT Aspire results show poverty continues to challenge Benton, Washington districts

Results of the new ACT Aspire continue to show an achievement gap between schools with high poverty and low poverty.

"That's something we've seen in assessment over and over," said Sarah McKenzie, executive director of the Office of Education Policy.

ACT Aspire

• Given this spring to third- through 10th-graders.

• Students tested in five content areas.

• English focused on knowledge and skills for editing and revision, including punctuation, grammar, sentence structure and effective language use.

• Reading examined a student’s ability to make meaning and reason through text passages.

• Writing consisted of a 30-minute writing task testing a student’s ability to generate, develop and communicate ideas.

• Math skills tested include numbers, operations, geometric shapes, statistical charts, algebraic expressions and probability.

• Science covered skills include the ability to interpret of data, scientific investigation and on fundamental science content knowledge.

Source: Staff report

Where to find ACT Aspire results online:

Preliminary ACT Aspire Test Results from Arkansas Department of Education —

www.arkansased.gov/…

Arkansas ACT Aspire Achievement from the Office of Education Policy —

www.officeforeducat…

Source: Staff report

With a few exceptions, the highest performing schools statewide were schools with fewer poor children while the lowest performing schools tended to have higher concentrations of low-income pupils, she said. Statistics on poverty in schools are based on the percentages of children who qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on family income.

Results for districts and schools in Benton and Washington counties follow a similar pattern.

An analysis by Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas provides an overall glimpse of student performance. The office found that 68 percent of students earned a ready or exceeding score in English, followed by 43 percent in math, 39 percent in reading, 38 percent in science and 31 percent in math.

The analysis also includes an overall grade-point average of 2.33 for the state, reflecting the performance levels of all students tested across grade levels and subjects.

A similar analysis was done for school districts and campuses across the state, including for the 123 schools in Benton and Washington counties. Among the 31 schools in the bottom quarter for performance, based on the grade-point average, at least 30 have low-income student populations above 50 percent of their enrollment. Among the top 31 performing schools, just six schools have low-income student populations of 49 percent or more.

Poverty affects a child's education because of struggles that are common to low-income families, including low levels of parental education, less stability in the home and poor nutrition, McKenzie said.

"A lot of that has to do with the skills kids come into school with," McKenzie said. "Once kids start behind, it's very hard for them to catch up."

The ACT Aspire results set a new baseline for evaluating student performance, educators said. Students have experienced a series of changes in testing over the past three years. The state administered Benchmark and end-of-course tests through the 2013-14 school year. The state then switched to a new testing system in the 2014-15 school year based on work of a multistate consortium, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers in 2015.

The switch to the ACT Aspire for the 2015-16 school year followed recommendations from a 16-member Governor's Council on Common Core Review, which considered concerns about the tests from the consortium, and the desire of Gov. Asa Hutchinson to withdraw from consortium.

The ACT Aspire for the first time provided separate scores in English, reading and writing, McKenzie said. More students earned proficient scores in English than in any of the five subjects tested, but the state's lowest performance was in writing.

The English test focuses more on skills related to grammar, punctuation and editing, while the writing test gave students 30 minutes to generate, develop and compose ideas into an essay.

Past test results only reported one literacy score, though the ACT Aspire also provides a combined English language arts score reflecting all three areas.

Math also is a subject that continues to challenge students, McKenzie said.

Springdale

In Springdale, where four schools were in the top quarter and 13 schools were in the bottom quarter, 70.4 percent of the 21,260 students in the district come from low-income families, according to data from the office.

Nearly half of Springdale students also are learning English. Schools with higher percentages poor students and students learning English have more challenges, said Melody Morgan, director of accountability and assessment for the district.

Many instructional strategies exist for teachers to use with children in poverty and with children learning English, she said.

"It's a great opportunity," Morgan said.

Morgan said she was glad to see that 39.1 percent of students in the district earned ready or exceeding scores in writing. The district exceeded the state's performance in writing.

The results show a need to focus on reading, which also should result in higher performance in science, Morgan said. The science portion of the ACT Aspire involves a significant amount of reading.

Parents should know the test results only measure student performance against the state's college and career-ready standards, Morgan said. This was the second year for students to be tested on those standards.

"This is one piece of the story to get better," Morgan said. "I would look at how my child did in the context of that school. If my child is growing and is learning, I consider that as a success."

Decatur

The Decatur School District ranked last among the public school districts and charter schools in Benton and Washington counties in overall grade-point average and in English, science and reading. The district ranked second to last in math and writing. Decatur Elementary, Decatur Middle and Decatur High School all ranked in the bottom quarter of the region's schools.

The district also had the highest percentage of low-income students, who made up 79.3 percent of the 585 students attending Decatur schools. Superintendent Jeff Gravette anticipates the percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals will exceed 90 percent this school year.

The results were disappointing, especially in the middle and high school, Gravette said. Efforts to improve performance include tutoring offered after school and in the summer. The school board also recently approved a new math curriculum intended to help boost test scores.

"It will be an uphill climb, but I believe we have the staff in place to dramatically improve our achievement at the upper grade levels," he said.

Bentonville

In Bentonville, just 25 percent of children are low-income, and a school district with low poverty should be high performing, said Superintendent Debbie Jones. The district was the highest ranking by grade-point average among the region's large school districts, and overall ranked fourth behind three charter schools Haas Hall Academy, Haas Hall Academy Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy.

The Haas Hall campuses don't participate in the federal lunch program, and therefore, don't report low-income students. At Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, 7.3 percent of students were from low-income families.

Jones said the results for Bentonville are an affirmation of a healthy education system, though she does anticipate efforts to strengthen students' skills writing, the lowest area of performance.

"You are judged upon how you communicate in writing, and you need to communicate well," Jones said.

Rogers

Writing also is an area for growth for the Rogers School District, said Virginia Abernathy, assistant superintendent for the district's elementary schools. Just 41.4 percent Rogers students earned a score of ready or exceeding in that area.

The 2016 testing season also marked the second time for school districts to participate in large-scale online testing, even for the youngest test-takers.

"Third-graders don't have the typing skills," Abernathy said. "I believe that is hampering their ability to show what they really can do in writing due to the time constraints."

Students had just 30 minutes for the writing test, she said.

Among the campuses, Abernathy found that 13 of the 15 elementary schools in Rogers outscored other elementary schools in Benton and Washington counties.

The Rogers School District also had three campuses with more than 50 percent poverty rank in the top quarter of all Benton and Washington county schools, based on the grade-point average determined by the Office of Education Policy. Three Rogers schools also ranked in the bottom quarter.

Rogers educators have developed a system for identifying students who need help with specific skills and grouping them with other students with the same problem, Abernathy said. The system also assists teachers in determining which students have mastered skills and need their learning extended.

Fayetteville

A new director of data management in Fayetteville is just beginning to compile reports on how Fayetteville third- through 10th-graders did, said Kim Garrett, associate superintendent of secondary education. Garrett anticipates the district's administration will take a close look at the results, break the test scores down by subject, grade level and skills tested.

Among Northwest Arkansas schools, Vandergriff Elementary School, with 9.6 percent of students in low-income families, had the highest grade-point average, while Asbell Elementary School, with 76.8 percent of students in low-income families, ranked in the bottom quarter.

Schools with more students in poverty tend to struggle more, but poverty is not an excuse, she said.

"Our job is to make sure that all students learn at high levels," Garrett said.

NW News on 07/18/2016

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