Making the grade
Editor’s note: This is the third in a multi-part series.
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.
Of the 11 districts with elementary schools in Bureau County, six schools improved their scores, while the scores at the other five dropped. Seven of the school districts — Bureau Valley, Princeton, Malden, Spring Valley, Ohio, LaMoille and DePue — failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) as defined by No Child Left Behind.
On Tuesday, the BCR explored how the four top-scoring school districts in the country performed. Here’s how the other seven districts did.
Dalzell
Dalzell’s scores climbed two points to 87.7 percent of the students meeting or exceeding state standards, moving the district up to fifth place in the county.
No individual class scores were released as Dalzell’s largest class was the nine students in third grade. Overall, students scored highest in math, with 94.6 of all students meeting or exceeding state standards.
The district made AYP.
Princeton
Princeton Elementary continued its multi-year upward climb with the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards inching up from 85.0 to 85.1 percent, the district’s highest score to date.
Individual scores were released for all classes, and math scores were higher than reading scores in every grade except eighth. Third-grade math scores, at 96.2 percent, were the highest in the district. The lowest score was the 76.5 percent achieved in third-grade reading.
PES again failed to make AYP in reading.
Malden
Malden’s scores slid 1.2 percentage points, decreasing from 79.7 percent of the students meeting or exceeding state standards to 78.5 percent, almost four points below the state average.
Malden again failed to make AYP but switched from 2011’s low numbers in math to lower numbers in reading in 2012. In math, 86.7 percent of the students met or exceeded standards, compared to 75.6 percent in reading.
Spring Valley
Scores in Spring Valley continued a three-year downward trend, dropping from 80.4 percent of the students meeting or exceeding state standards in 2011 to 78.3 percent this spring. Fourth- and sixth-grade reading scores were the lowest at 64.4 and 66.7 percent, respectively. The highest scores came in fifth-grade math with 92.6 percent of the students meetings or exceeding.
The district failed to make AYP in reading and for the math subgroup of students with disabilities. The scores of subgroups with fewer than 45 students are not reported.
Ohio
The percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards in Ohio returned to a downward trend, falling from 86.2 to 75.2 percent, the lowest percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards since 2005.
Due to class size, individual class scores were released only for the third and seventh grades. One hundred percent of the third-graders met or exceeded standards in reading. Overall, only 68.1 percent of the students met or exceeded standards in reading, causing the district to fail to make AYP.
LaMoille
LaMoille’s scores also continued a generally downward trend, dropping from 71.7 percent meeting or exceeding standards in 2011, to this year’s 66.8 percent.
Scores were released for every grade with the third-graders providing the highlight with 85.7 of the students meeting or exceeding standards in math. All but two of the categories saw scores lower than the state average, including fourth-grade reading, where only 43.5 percent of the students — more than 33 percentage points below the average — met or exceeded the state standards.
The district again failed to make AYP in either reading or math.
DePue
DePue’s scores saw considerable improvement, climbing almost four points to 66.8 percent of the students meeting or exceeding state standards last year.
Reading scores trailed math scores in every grade except eighth grade, where they were tied at 67.9 percent. Only 45.7 percent of the sixth-graders were able to meet or exceed standards in reading. The highest percentage of students meeting or exceeding continued to come in third-grade math scores, with 91.2 percent of the students meeting the goal.
The district again failed to make AYP, this year in reading for the subgroups of students with disabilities or economically disadvantaged; and for math for the subgroups of white students and students with disabilities.
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