Fewer than half of East Aurora School District 131 elementary and middle school students are on track for the start of the school year in reading and math, preliminary testing data from the district shows.
In response, district leadership says East Aurora is taking steps like offering professional development to staff and administrators and looking at revisions to its curriculum.
The data was presented at a meeting of the East Aurora school board’s curriculum committee in late September. The numbers were as of mid-September, when some students were still taking make-up tests, according to Ami Engel, the district’s associate superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment.
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The results show that a little under half of District 131 students in first through eighth grade are “on track” for the start of the year.
Being on track, Engel explained at the meeting, essentially means that a student is performing at their current grade level in terms of skills, or one grade level behind. The latter is because students are being tested at the start of the school year, she noted, so they wouldn’t be expected to know all of the content for that grade level already.
As of mid-September, 49% of first- through eighth-grade students were on track in math according to Engel’s presentation, while 41% were on track for reading English.
And 48% of first- through fifth-graders were on track for reading Spanish, the presentation indicated. The district didn’t test middle school students on reading Spanish, according to Engel.
“This just tells us that, across the district, over half of our students are entering that school year needing more than just exposure to grade-level instruction,” Engel said at the meeting. “We have work to do so that we can get these students where they need to go.”
The results in question come from the district’s fall benchmark testing with i-Ready, a kindergarten through twelfth grade assessment used at East Aurora.
This is the first year East Aurora is using i-Ready for both reading and math assessments, according to Superintendent Bob Halverson. The district had used it for just math previously.
District leadership said they found that the i-Ready assessment has tended to more accurately predict East Aurora students’ performance on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, or IAR, a state test.
The i-Ready service also has a personalized learning platform that helps show where students are at grade level, and where they need to improve, according to Halverson.
For the students that are not on track, Engel said, the district needs to “accelerate their learning in both grade-level standards and in areas where they have those gaps.”
Engel’s presentation shows 27% of first- through eighth-grade students in the district were three or more grade levels below where they are supposed to be when it comes to math, compared to 34% of students for reading English.
The data collected by the district seems to reveal that the proportion of students who are on track in these areas slides over the course of elementary and middle school.
For example, per Engel’s presentation at the meeting last month, 79% of first-graders were at or above grade level in math, but only 36% of eighth-graders were. In reading English, that figure drops from 71% in first grade to 39% in eighth grade.
“For those middle grades in particular, we need to be asking, ‘What are those high-leverage skills our students are missing?’” Engel said at the meeting.
Engel also pointed out differences in the percentages for English learners and students with disabilities, as both groups trended lower in terms of being on track for the year than the overall proportion of students.
Thanking the district for being “transparent and honest,” board member Saul Olivas said at the meeting that the data is “very powerful,” expressing concern about the numbers presented.
“Are the practices that we are implementing … working?” Olivas asked. “We need to have those serious conversations, and upfront.”
Halverson said that the district needs to make sure it is “differentiating” in what it provides to students.
The core curriculum needs to be followed, he said, and there needs to be instructional practices that are “grounded in research.” But it can’t be a “one-size-fits-all.”
Acknowledging that the current situation “isn’t acceptable,” Halverson claimed that having “open conversations about the data” was not happening in the district before he took over, and that doing so is a focus of his.
“We just have to make sure that we’re doing that each and every day, and being realistic about where we’re at,” Halverson said.
Halverson told The Beacon-News that the district was not necessarily looking at “more than typical growth” previously, meaning improvement that will enable students who are behind grade level to catch up, not just continue at the level they are at but remain behind. Focusing on that metric is meant to help close the gaps, he explained.
So, what does the district do next?
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In an interview with The Beacon-News Thursday, Engel said the district is looking at the core concepts assessed on the IAR and seeing whether the district’s curriculum matches up, making revisions as needed. The district is also doing professional development for staff and administrators.
But it won’t be a quick fix, according to Halverson.
“When you have a gap that wide, when you have some students who may be operating at the 90th percentile and some who may be operating at the third percentile … you know as an educator, it’s unfair to ask you to close that gap in a year,” Halverson said at the meeting last month. “So it is going to take multiple years.”
“I don’t think it’s a simplistic answer,” he added. “But it starts with acknowledging that we’re not happy with where we’re at.”