NEW MADISON – Tri-Village Local School District’s state report card was a mix of highs and lows, but the lateness of the results means there’s little, if anything, that can be done in response to the results this year.
“In education, we look at trends,” said Josh Sagester, superintendent of Tri-Village Local School District, “and right now we are only getting snapshots because of the constant changing in assessments.”
A common concern for school administrators over this year’s state report cards is that they provide little to no opportunity to comparison to previous years to actually track the school’s progress and improvement. The assessment standards, formats and providers have changed from year-to-year, making any comparison of data from year-to-year largely invalid.
Comparisons may still be made from district to district, but even that is misleading, as PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) has itself reported that the online assessments conducted last school year were harder than the pencil-and-paper versions, so schools that took the online tests would tend to score lower.
“Another obstacle is the time frame in which we received the data this year,” Sagester said. “It’s difficult to make data-driven decisions when the data arrives in late February, thus we are on the backswing of our school year.”
Sagester does believe the report card represents student achievement and the school’s quality of education, to a degree.
“We always own our own date,” Sagester said, “but the value of what we do within these walls cannot be measured in a one-day assessment here at Tri-Village.”
Sagester said Tri-Village Schools conducted testing entirely online last school year, and there were “minimal issues with the testing platform.”
Tri-Village’s state report card results for the 2014-15 school year included the following (the Progress data is subject to change because the district is appealing the data):
Achievement
-Performance index (how many students passed the state test?): 75 percent, C;
-Indicators met (how we did they do?): 62.5 percent, D;
Progress
Did the students get a year’s worth of growth? Did they get more? Did they get less?
-Overall: B;
-Gifted: D;
-Students with disabilities: F;
-Lowest 20 percent in achievement: B;
Gap closing
Is every student succeeding, regardless of income, race, ethnicity or disability?
-Annual measurable objectives: 66.7 percent, D.
The breakdown of indicators met was as follows:
-Third grade: math, 77.1 percent; reading 79.2 percent;
-Fourth grade: math, 58.9 percent; reading, 63.5 percent; social studies, 59.5 percent;
-Fifth grade: math, 69 percent; reading, 65.7 percent; science, 65.7 percent;
-Sixth grade: math, 73.7 percent; reading, 77.2 percent; social studies, 73.7 percent;
-Seventh grade: math, 75.5 percent; reading, 81.1 percent;
-Eighth grade: math, 55.2 percent; reading, 87.9 percent; science, 46.6 percent;
-10th grade, Ohio Graduation Test: math, 81.8 percent; reading, 92.4 percent; science, 78.8 percent; social studies, 84.8 percent; writing, 83.3 percent;
-11th grade, OGT: math, 91.2 percent; reading, 98.2 percent; science, 93 percent; social studies, 96.5 percent; writing, 98.2 percent.
