Author: Lisa Deffendall • First Posted: Thursday, September 23, 2010

Gallery (click any photo to view the gallery)

"Miracles don't happen in a vaccum. It takes a lot of dedicated people," said Cardinal Valley Principal Ivonne Beegle, citing teachers, parents and volunteers. "The amount of support we've received has helped us get where we are."

Student achievement levels in Fayette County continue to climb to record heights. Amid a mix of celebration and call to action, Superintendent Stu Silberman recommitted district and school leaders to accelerating the improvement.

“Although our achievement levels continued to increase and we are closing achievement gaps, we have to increase the pace as the targets continue to rise,” he said.

Test results released today show that Fayette County scores significantly outpace state averages on every measure, achievement gaps are steadily closing, and Fayette high school students continue to score above state and national levels on the ACT.

See details and links below

Silberman praised one local school where improvement has skyrocketed for two years in a row. Cardinal Valley Elementary has seen the percentages of students scoring proficient and distinguished in reading go from 58 percent in 2007 to 78 percent in 2010. In math, the transformation has been even more dramatic – from 48 percent in 2007 to 82 percent in 2010.

Other schools also boosted improvement levels for kids and closed achievement gaps, Silberman noted.

“As we move closer to the 2014 goal of getting all students to proficiency, rapid turnarounds like the one at Cardinal Valley are going to be required,” he said.

Case in point are the district’s results on No Child Left Behind, which compares student performance by subgroup to a state-set goal. Although the percentages of students scoring proficient or better in reading and math rose for every subgroup (except Asian math, which dipped from 94.13 percent to 93.96 percent), the gains were not enough to clear the higher targets set under No Child Left Behind. Each year from now until 2014, reading goals jump roughly 8 percentage points and math goals jump roughly 10 percentage points.

While awaiting the new accountability system, parents and community members used to seeing a single score to gauge school improvement might feel off balance. To help with that, a trio of independent education advocacy groups has stepped up.

The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, the Kentucky Association of School Councils and the Council for Better Education together developed a way to calculate a single score for each school in the state. Their formula is as similar to the old CATS score as possible, but these new index scores cannot be compared with previous years because the General Assembly did away with writing portfolios and tests in arts & humanities and practical living & vocational studies.

In order to gauge annual growth or decline, the three groups have recalculated past years’ test results with the new formula, allowing our community to see trends since 2007. Like the old CATS scores, these numbers range from 0 to 140, with a score of 100 or above representing that a school has reached proficiency.

According to these “transitional” index scores, 24 of Fayette County’s 50 schools have earned scores beyond the original state benchmark of 100.

In analyzing the scores, we have determined some irregularities in the results. In our school district and across the state, administrators are reporting huge and unexplained drops in science and social studies performance. In the area of science, more than half of the students in the states received a 0 on one of the open response questions.

“This year I’m serving as the president of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, and I’ve received calls from superintendents all over the state regarding social studies scores,” Silberman said. “We’ve been in contact with the Kentucky Department of Education, and while they agree something doesn’t look right, they haven’t figured out what the problem is yet.”

We are hopeful that the Kentucky Department of Education will be able to resolve these issues quickly because we believe that with the accurate science and social studies results, several of our schools would have made gains on their index scores.

Given the myriad scores released today by KDE, we’ll summarize other key highlights here.

• A guide to what it all means

Kentucky Core Content Test / Interim Performance Report

The state release of student achievement data in the areas of reading, math, science, social studies and writing showed that across the board in elementary, middle and high school, more students earned proficient or better marks in every subject area, except where we have concerns about the validity of the test.

The next step for teachers, principals and district leaders is to analyze achievement of individual students and groups of students by gender, race, socio-economic status and other classifications such as special needs, gifted and talented, and limited English proficiency.

• Kentucky Core Content Test transition index

• KCCT percent Proficient and Distinguished
  

No Child Left Behind

As a district, Fayette County met 20 of its 25 goals, or 80 percent of the targets. Although greater percentages of students reached proficiency in reading and math, the gains were not enough to keep pace with the 8 and 10 percentage point jumps in the target scores. The district missed its goals in reading for African-American students, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students with special needs, as well as in math for African-American students and students with specials needs. At the individual school level, 30 of the district’s 50 schools met all their federal targets.

• NCLB results

• School choice and AYP consequences
  

Iowa Test of Basic Skills

Since this is the first year our students took the test, it is difficult to draw too many conclusions or do any trend analysis. However, at every grade level, students in Fayette County not only scored above the 50^th percentile (the national average), but also bested state percentile rankings by as many as 10 points in some cases.

At the middle school level, seven of our 12 middle schools and 17 of our 33 elementary schools had students above the 50^th percentile at every grade level. Notable were schools like Cassidy, Rosa Parks and Veterans Park elementaries and SCAPA Bluegrass, where students were around the 75^th percentile at every grade level.

• ITBS results
  

College and Career Readiness

Since this is the first year for this data, we see the 2010 results as a benchmark year, but we were pleased that our district average was above the state average and bested state results in every benchmark. We will be working with schools to delve into these numbers to see how to better help our students.

• Readiness results
  

Gap to Goal Comparison

A new report unveiled by the state this year combines reading and math achievement levels and calculates the progress made by each student subgroup toward the goal of having 100 percent of students scoring proficient or better. At the district level, more students in every subgroup reached proficiency levels in 2010, with the exception of Asian students, which held steady with more than 90 percent of students already meeting standards. 

• Gap to Goal calculations