Much of the conversation at the Churchill County School Board meeting last week centered around whether or not the district would return students to a traditional day-long schedule for the rest of the year. Citing district MAP testing, many of the trustees said students attending classes on the hybrid AM/PM schedule were showing growth and ultimately voted to keep the half-day hybrid model through the end of this school year.
MAP testing, the Measure of Academic Progress is given to Kindergarten through 8th grade students at certain times during the year, typically fall, winter, and spring as a way to track learning progression across time. Teachers can use the data to measure where students are performing and because the data is kept as part of the student record, can see where the student was performing throughout their school career. The data can be a useful tool to shape classroom instruction because it shows weaknesses and where students need help.
Lisa Bliss is the assessment data coordinator for the district, and in her report to the board last week, presented the Winter MAPs summary reports for Math and Language Arts. “Looking at the big picture, the most encouraging piece as far as the growth charts go, despite the issues with the pandemic, is we’re seeing some really good growth. I do think there are concerns, especially in mathematics – is the growth enough in terms of meeting rates of projected proficiency we would like to see for our students?”
The Summary Report for mathematics shows 33% of Kindergartners met the growth target. With 46% of first graders, 57% of second, 76% of third, 66% of fourth, 68% of fifth, 49% of sixth, 45% of seventh, and 54% of eighth graders meeting the growth target for math. That means 67% of Kindergartners did not meet growth targets, along with 54% of first graders, 43% of second, 24% of third, 34% of fourth, 32% of fifth, 51% of sixth, 55% of seventh, and 46% of eighth graders not meeting growth targets.
Results were similar for Language Arts, with 43% of Kindergartners meeting the target, 57% of first graders, 60% of second graders, 58% of third graders, 54% of fourth graders, 56% of fifth graders, 44% of sixth graders, 44% of seventh graders, 52% of eighth graders meeting their growth targets.
Overall, there were 39.3% of K-3rd graders identified by the MAP testing as struggling readers.
Growth does not measure proficiency, but the MAP data addresses predicted proficiencies which were even lower than the growth data. For example, 19% of first graders were predicted to be proficient in language arts for the winter MAP tests.
Trustee Carmen Schank commented that she thinks it's interesting that the young students are coming in so low, and that there is another decline in 5-7th grades as well, and then asked, “What’s the issue with that?”
Bliss says looking at the predicted proficiency targets for the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium), those thresholds are high. “When SBAC is asking our kids for national norming we can see how high the norm rates get, in math especially, the high 60s and in eighth grade the 74th percentile.”
The SBAC is referring to the nationally standardized tests given and required by the State of Nevada to measure student proficiency in meeting state standards for the Common Core instruction in math and language arts.
Bliss went on to say, “We know we need to support our students to become proficient in college bound and what Nevada is expecting of them for graduation. That is part of why we see the decline when we hit the middle school. We still need to address it, and systemically put into place what our kids need so they can move up into those grade levels and be more proficient.”
In other business, Trustees heard from E.C. Best Elementary staff regarding their PBIS program, (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports). According to Principal Keith Boone, they have seen great improvement in student behavior and teachers gave out 6,432 Bulldog Bucks to praise students for doing what is right. Boone is concerned with data collected from teachers that students at the school are not all getting along with each other and the staff will all be working to improve that statistic.
Six staff members were approved for the Early Retirement Incentive Program, including Chuck Kaiser, Karen Grimes, Mary Phillips, Karen Beach, Ken Grimes, and Richard Oswald. There were a total of 13 applications for the incentive, however, seven of those were not eligible according to the program policy.
The school board meets the second and fourth Wednesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. and agendas can be found on the district webpage: ChurchillCSD.com.
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