Lower Test Scores May Be Caused By New Programs

With the Bedminster Township School District testing results from 2011 in, the administration is seeing some decreases in advanced proficiency—and wondering if newly implemented programs are the reason for those changes.

Jennifer Giordano, supervisor of instruction, presented the results at the Oct. 22 board of education meeting.

“We are happy with some of the scores,” she said. “You’ll see where the improvements are, and we are a little upset that the information they are still using is based on the 2000 census.”

As far as language arts goes for third-graders, Giordano said, the district is seeing an increase in advanced proficiency for general education students, though it is only at about 3 percent.

“When we start to look at increases over time, this is where we want to look,” she said. “Is it a big increase, no, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Giordano said the numbers for proficiency have decreased, but that could be attributed to many new programs they have just begun to put in place.

“This is the first year where kindergarten through fourth grade has a comprehensive reading program,” she said. “Thanks to all the elementary school teachers coming together, we should start to see some increases.”

This is very similar in math for third graders, Giordano said, with the number of advanced proficient and proficient students decreasing by about 10 percent.

“We could look at it and say that third grade has a brand new math program,” she said. “This is the first year of implementing that, and we might struggle a bit until everyone is up to speed and the kids get used to the new system.”

In grade four, Giordano said, the numbers are also disappointing, with results lower than the state averages.

“I can feel your pain and frustrations, so you can certainly feel mine in not liking the results,” she said. “We are hoping that with a more structured reading language arts block, we will start to see more of an increase.”

But the math scores for fourth graders, Giordano said, are very positive.

“We are looking at a 7.5 percent increase for the total mean over last year, and looking at almost advanced proficient for a mean,” she said.

Fifth grade has stayed overall the same, Giordano said, performing very well on the whole, while sixth grade language arts scores were better than previous years.

“The current seventh grade class made some great strides,” she said.

There weren’t too many other noticeable changes among the grade levels, with some decreases and increases, although Giordano said the district is making great strides among the students with limited English. Students in many different grades outperformed the state averages.

As far as highlights, Giordano said, 48 percent of sixth graders improved their individual language arts scores over their efforts in fifth grade, and 96 percent of those students were advanced proficient or proficient.

In addition, Giordano said, 89 percent of eighth grade general education students were proficient or advanced proficient in language arts.

Now, Giordano said, they need to look into areas of focus, such as working with text and analyzing trends in reading. They also need to keep looking at trends, she said, for kindergarten through fourth grade writing programs and math programs for kindergarten through fifth graders.

“The new programs are going to be effective, and the kids will have a lot more exposure,” she said. “In math really, we need to start looking for trends to see if we find specific weaknesses.”

Bedminster Reading Specialist Donna Turso said third grade is traditionally a big change for students.

“They are expected to do more reading independently, and there are some changes in the grade level,” she said. “I think the test has changed a little bit too, the format of the test.”

Still, Giordano said, there was a bigger drop in scores in 2012 than in other years.

“They’re tweaking questions, and I’m not sure how much or how little of those changes are now on the test,” she said. “Our third graders were usually the ones who scored higher, but the DFG [District Factor Group] group went down dramatically.”

“As far as I’m concerned, we didn’t do anything wrong, and we’re going in the right direction,” she added.

And the most important thing to do to continue helping the students, Giordano said, is to work on training for teachers.

“Our teachers need to be trained properly,” she said. “We can’t just put new programs out for them time and time again and expect them to just pick up the ball and run with it. We can’t work that way any longer.”

“They need to be training, and not just once,” she added. “We need to bring the trainers back.”