ISAT scores continue to climb
Editor’s note: This is the second in a multi-part series on schools in the county and how students did in their achievement tests. Today’s story features six of the 12 elementary schools in the county. On Saturday, the remaining six will be featured.
Last spring, students in third, fifth, sixth and eighth grades took the Illinois Standards Achievement Test in reading and mathematics, while students in fourth and seventh grades were tested in reading, mathematics and science.
Across the state, the number of students meeting or exceeding state standards across the state continued to inch up, climbing from last year’s 79.1 percent to this year’s 79.8 percent.
Of the 12 districts with elementary schools in Bureau County, eight schools improved their scores, with the biggest jump achieved by Leepertown, which increased its percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards by more than 15 percentage points, to 89.4 percent.
Just like last year, all but three school districts were above the state average of 79.8 percent, with only LaMoille, DePue and Malden missing the mark. Last year only the DePue School District failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), but this year DePue was joined by Spring Valley due to its reading scores; Bureau Valley with its reading scores in its students with disabilities subgroup; and Princeton Elementary, with both its reading and math scores in its students with disabilities subgroup.
How did the elementary schools in Bureau County measure up?
Cherry
It’s hard to improve on being the best, but Cherry students repeated in the top spot in the county by nudging last year’s 95.2 percentage of students meeting or exceeding to an even more impressive 95.5. This followed last year’s performance, in which the number of students meeting or exceeding standards increased from 87.4 percent to 95.2 percent. Cherry was the only district to break the 90 percent mark in 2009.
Individual class scores are not released for privacy reasons when fewer than 10 students take the test in each class, so only Cherry’s eighth-graders had their scores reported. In that class, a whopping 100 percent of the students met or exceeded standards in math, and 91.7 percent accomplished that goal in reading.
Neponset
Neponset students again kept their grip on second place in the county this year, despite seeing an almost five percentage point drop in the number of students meeting or exceeding standards, from 94.4 percent to a still impressive 89.7. Due to class size, individual class scores were released only for the fifth grade, where every single fifth-grader met or exceeded in math but less than 82 percent did in reading.
Leepertown
Small schools show the greatest test score swings, as one or two students can change percentages by a great deal. That certainly is proven true in Leepertown, where the number of students meeting or exceeding standards swings up and down. This year, 2009 was definitely an up year for the district, as 89.4 percent of the students met or exceeded standards, up more than 15 percentage points from last year’s 74 percent. None of the classes at Leepertown had more than 10 students taking the test, so no individual scores were released.
Bureau Valley
Bureau Valley fell from its third place finish last year, but the district’s consistently high scores gave it the fourth place position for 2009. Scores dropped, but only slightly, with the number of students meeting or exceeding state standards, dipping about two points from 89.8 percent to 88.1.
Individual class scores were released for all grades in Bureau Valley. Reading scores continued to lag behind in every grade tested except for the eighth-grade, which saw 93.3 percent of the students meet or exceed. Seventh-grade math scores, at 93.8 percent, were the highest in all grades and subjects, with the low mark coming in third grade reading, with 76.9 percent. Scores in every category were higher than the state average.
Ladd
Students in Ladd improved their scores, moving a point from 86.6 percent meeting or exceeding state standards to 87.8 percent, but dropped from fourth to fifth in the county.
Scores from all of Ladd’s classes were also released, and the fourth- and eighth-graders led the pack. The number of students meeting or exceeding standards in fourth-grade science was 96.2 percent, closely followed by the eighth-graders, with 95.8 percent achieving that goal in math. Reading scores continued to trail math scores, and the lowest score was the third-grade reading score, with only 62.5 percent meeting or exceeding standards.
Dalzell
Rounding out this year’s top six is Dalzell, which climbed a notch from last year’s seventh place. Scores climbed a little more than a point, with 84.3 percent of its students meeting or exceeding the state standards. No individual class scores were released.
Read in Saturday’s BCR how the rest of Bureau County’s elementary schools did.
Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.
