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State on WB schools: ‘Acceptable,’ ‘commendable’
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · February 22, 2018
Following the same group of pupils up through the grades, West Branch saw seven of 12 groups do better this year on state reading and/or math tests.
And comparing this year’s pupils against those from the previous year, West Branch saw improvements in nine of 16 grades.
West Branch also scored better than state averages in half of the 16 categories.
Hoover Elementary earned a “Commendable” rating, putting it in the top 41 percent of elementary schools; West Branch Middle School and West Branch High School both earned “Acceptable” ratings along with 46 percent of other schools in their category.
“We want all kids to generally show growth and proficiency,” Superintendent Kevin Hatfield said. “Closing achievement gaps is always a real challenge.”
Hatfield said the state is giving “more weight” to schools with higher parent involvement.
“This is an area we should all focus on — to get as much genuine partnerships as we can, and as many meetings with parents as we can,” he said. “When students get support at home, they do better (in school).”
As for the school ratings, Hatfield said Hoover pupils meeting or exceeding 76.5 percent proficiency targets does not surprise him.
“We probably don’t need the State Report Card to know we’re making progress there,” he said. “But it’s nice to have these snapshots.”
He credited Principal Jess Burger and her staff.
“We can definitely say that, across the district, we’re making slow gains in reading instruction,” the superintendent said.
The score is 2.1 percent lower than the average elementary school.
The middle school’s 75.1 percent proficiency rating is 3.4 percent lower than the state average. Hatfield said that lower scores by children from low-income homes, or homes where the primary language is not English, or who need special education, or who are classified as “at risk,” combined to pull down scores.
“We’ve known for a long time their overall performance is not as high as the general population,” Hatfield said.
The school augmented at-risk support last year, and looks for ways to close scoring gaps in other categories, he said.
“We want all kids to perform really high, but the concern for our administrative team is, ‘What is most impactful?’” the superintendent said. “Having the status quo isn’t the worst thing in the world, but we’d like to see the gap close, (yet) we don’t want the gap to close by (higher scoring) students going down.”
More school funding would allow more individualized education, he said. The state legislature seems poised to provide a 1-percent increase in state aid.
“But because of funding, we can’t grab seven more people to help,” Hatfield said.
The high school’s 87.4 percent proficiency rating is 9 percent higher than the state average, though still rated “Acceptable.” Hatfield said he did not understand this.
“We’re scoring higher — our scores have gone up, but there’s a drop in our overall ranking,” he said.
To bring those scores higher, the high school again looks for more impactful teaching strategies, yet the superintendent noted that the state changed weighting factors for college readiness twice in the past four years.
“It’s a good snapshot,” he said. “But one can read too much into it. (Again) this is not new to us, but we’ve got to get to those kids.”
The high school also sees scores trailing from children from low-income families. In reading, scores at lower grade levels tend to fall below state averages — with the exception of seventh grade — then surpass state averages in high school.
“We’ve always found it interesting that reading proficiency scores at our high school almost always exceed the state averages even though we don’t have a direct reading instruction class there for our general population of students. We credit our elementary and middle school teachers for great skills and reading instruction they do because the work is showing up over time at the high school."
He said reading improves in high school.
“Our kids read pretty good at the high school,” he said, noting that 85 to 90 percent of students continue their education at West Branch through high school. “It’s interesting to see that”
Hatfield noted that the state initiated screening for early literacy programs where teachers input reading scores online, “then it kicks out ideas and instructional strategies.”
West Branch wants to be among the first to adopt this FastBridge system.
In math, all but two grade levels do better meeting or exceeding standards than state averages, and those other two grades — sixth and eighth — trail state averages by one point.
Hatfield said the school’s choice of Everyday Math focuses on concepts and teaching them “more deeply,” creating a “slingshot effect” on overall scores.
Further, in his first year with the school, the middle school started teaching algebra in eighth grade.
“Our math teacher really picked up the rigor,” he said. “We want to maintain that.”
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Editor's note: This story was corrected March 2 to clarify Superintendent Kevin Hatfield's comments regarding reading instruction at the lower grades and how it takes effect at the high school level.
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