The Oregon Department of Education’s release of standardized testing results from this past spring revealed concerning proficiency levels statewide in English, math and science. The numbers that came out of the Philomath School District were a little more encouraging.
“In terms of testing, we’re above where the state averages are,” Philomath Superintendent of Schools Susan Halliday said.
New Oregon education data shows continued learning declines since COVID in key subjects
Oregon students are still struggling to regain ground in their grasp of key subjects three years after returning to normal school routines following the COVID pandemic. The latest results from statewide assessment tests in English language arts, math and science show that across subjects, grades and districts, students are still about 10 percentage points behind…
Language arts among Philomath students continues to be strong but there were low percentages coming out of eighth-grade mathematics, which prompts questions, Halliday said, such as, “What are we seeing across the board there and what’s the same or what’s different in what we’re doing programmatically in mathematics?”
Statewide, less than a third of students are proficient in math. Said Halliday, “Math is a statewide issue … that seems to be where the biggest struggle is.”
The Oregon Department of Education released the Smarter Balanced test data Thursday. Students in grades 3-8 and 11 were tested this past spring in math and English. Science tests were administered to students in grades 5, 8 and 11.
“The summative testing, which is the once-a-year at the end of the (school) year, is what’s represented in these reports,” Halliday said. “It really is more about program data than it is individual student data in terms of the year’s already done pretty much for students.”
The testing window opens around the time students are wrapping up spring vacation and goes into June. It basically provides a sort of “this is how I did” snapshot, the superintendent said.
“It can tell you how they’ve done from year-to-year and if they’ve grown and things like that but really, it’s more about systems — what does it tell us about our systems?” Halliday said. “The state has a whole series of internal assessments available and we’ve chosen not to avail ourselves of those just because we don’t want to keep doing more testing.”
The testing results are categorized into four levels. Students with scores that land in levels 3 and 4 are proficient or advanced in the subject when compared to grade-level standards. Being ready for college or a career are also a component of proficiency for high school juniors.
The following breaks down each Philomath School District campus with the percentage of students that tested at levels 3 and 4:
- PHS juniors: 60.3% in language arts, 42.9% in math and 62.2% in science.
- Middle school: 51.6% in language arts and 28.8% in math for grades 6, 7 and 8; and 42.4% in science for eighth graders.
- Elementary school: 51.7% in language arts and 41.1% in math for grades 3, 4 and 5; and 34.7% in science for fifth graders.
- KVCS: 40.7% in language arts and 23.3% in math for grades 3-8 and 11 combined; and 21.9% in science for grades 5, 8 and 11 combined.
- Blodgett: 38.5% in language arts and 23.1% in math for grades 3-4 combined.
- Philomath Academy: Not enough students tested for the reporting of proficiency percentages.
Statewide, an average of 88% of eligible students participated in the tests, which are required by state and federal law. However, Oregon allows parents to opt their children out of testing.
“One of the struggles with us — and with a lot of schools — is participation,” Halliday said. “In English language arts and math, the state has a participation threshold that they measure that 95% or more of the students need to participate. But there is an opt-out clause that is available.”
In the Philomath School District, participation rates were 83.9% in language arts, 82.6% in math and 76.1% in science. The lowest percentages were seen with last year’s PHS juniors — less than 50% of those students took the language arts and math tests.
“Especially at those upper levels, the high school level primarily, we get a lot of students and families who are choosing to not participate,” Halliday said. “So when we look at the percentages of who met and who didn’t, the percentage is really based on a handful of your kids in some instances.”
Halliday said the district in the past has tried to communicate with parents to encourage their students to participate.
“It is helpful to us to learn things programmatically but if the opt-out clause is in there, that’s their choice,” she said. “So we try to encourage it and the state has given us some little snippets of some key messages to be able to put out to families … we need to look at other things.”
With such low participation among 11th graders, officials don’t have a real firm grasp of what those students understand in the core subjects.
“Who’s opting out vs. who’s opting in? … It’s all over the board,” Halliday said. “So even if you get 50% of your students participating, what can that tell you programmatically or not? If you have 100% of your students participating, then that looks a little different.”
The testing data plays a part in the district’s analysis of its academics and leads to questions to be considered.
“What’s happened that has caused a decrease, what’s happened that’s caused an increase? Can we pinpoint it? Did we have fewer students participate? What sorts of things can we figure out that might need to give us information programmatically?” Halliday said, throwing out examples of questions.
“Then we can also look at the other school district assessments that we do, and if we see that, for instance, our third graders are making consistent gains in literacy development across the years from those measures, why does it or doesn’t it mirror this?” she continued. “Are we asking different questions, should they align. So we’re taking a look at it in comparison to what are we seeing as the trends in what we’re doing in the district assessment?”
Halliday stressed that the state testing data is just one component in the overall picture.
“We take a look more at interim-level assessments that we do consistently in schools really as measures of growth more than reliance on solely this,” Halliday said. “If we were to make all of our decisions solely based on this, we could take some really wrong turns.”
Overall, Halliday sees the school district’s results out of the testing as positive.
“We’re not diving deeply backwards, which is the real positive thing — that we’re continuing to make gain, continuing to make growth,” she said. “When the state report cards come out … they will have other information such as attendance, students on track to graduate, graduation rates and so some of those kinds of things that we’ll be able to see in collaboration with this rounds out the picture.”
Student report cards should be released later this month.
