Concerns raised about 20% who don’t pass
Reading scores rise at GCSD and statewide



GUILDERLAND — While state education officials last Tuesday lauded the improved test results in middle-school English, some Guilderland school board members expressed concern over the fifth of students who aren’t passing the test.

Reading instruction has been a contentious issue at Guilderland over the last few years as a parents’ group has pushed for changes in curriculum. Reading instruction was one of the divisive issues in a hotly contested school board election this month at Guilderland.

Statewide, the percentage of eighth-graders passing the English test increased eight percentage points to 57 percent. Middle-school scores typically dip after elementary school and then come back up in high school.
Tests for middle- and elementary-school students are graded at four performance levels. Students at the top level, 4, exceeded standards; students at the next level, 3, met standards; students at Level 2 need extra help; and students at Level 1 are deemed to have "serious academic deficiencies."

Guilderland’s scores for English showed 79 percent of eighth-graders passing — that is, scoring at level 3 or 4 — the state-required test.
The scores statewide were "embargoed" until Tuesday said Nancy Andress, Guilderland’s assistant superintendent for instruction, when they were announced at a press conference. She presented the results to the Guilderland School Board last Tuesday night as part of the inch-thick school report card, which is available through a link at the district website (http://www.guilderlandschools.org/) or listed with data at the state’s website (http://www.nystart.gov/publicweb). Printed copies are also available at each of Guilderland’s schools and at the district office.

The data released last week was based on tests taken in 2007. The year before, 67 percent of eighth-graders at Farnsworth Middle School passed the test.

Figuring students in all grades, third through eighth, who took the test at Guilderland, the percentage of those passing the English tests went from 79 percent to 81 percent.
"The district had a two percentage-point improvement from 2006," noted Mary Helen Collen, the district’s data coordinator, even with two changes.

This year, only students who lived in the country less than one year were excluded from taking the test. In 2006, more students who speak English as a second language were allowed to take another test instead. Guilderland has 95 students, or 2 percent, who are English-language learners.

Secondly, 2007 marked a change in testing for special-education students. The state’s classification rate shows 12.36 percent of all students living in the Guilderland district, including those in private schools and those being home-schooled as well as those in the public schools, have disabilities, nearly the same as the statewide public school district total.

Previously, 1 percent could take an off-level test. Collen told The Enterprise, for example, that last year she had seventh-grade special-education students who were allowed to take the fifth-grade test.

The test scores of the special-education students are averaged together with the general-education students’ for the district’s tally.

For example, in sixth grade for the Guilderland district, where 81 percent of all students passed the English test, 91 percent of general education students passed the test, but only 24 percent of students with disabilities passed the test.
"This is one of our challenges," said Andress. She had listed eight challenges for the district in her report. One of them is to continue to provide academic intervention services to assist students who do not meet the state standard. "We continue to work on early intervention in reading," said Andress.

Another is to support students with disabilities to enable them to attain adequate yearly progress in English and math.

Andress presented charts for the board, comparing Guilderland’s test results with those of other Suburban Council schools. In all cases, Guilderland’s performance was equal to or better than the other Suburban Council districts and well above the state averages.

Collen said that the state’s formula for comparable schools, on which the report card data is based, does not place all seven of the district’s schools in the same group. The designation is based on such factors as income, special-education students, and English-language learners.
"The Suburban Council is who we work with and are compared with in the newspaper," said Andress. The major factor in the state’s list, she said "seems to be property value."

"Crack this"
Board member Hy Dubowsky requested that the data be analyzed to "tease out the variables."
Referring to the 20 percent of students who score at levels 1 or 2 for the reading test, Dubowsky said, "That 20 percent...seems to follow all of us in the suburban school districts."
He said he’d like the district to "take a look at a couple of years of data" and think about what is causing the failures. He suggested, for example, seeing if it correlated with students who live in single-parent households or those receiving free or reduced-price lunches.

Students from families with low incomes are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. Last year, Guilderland had 196 students, or 4 percent, eligible for free lunches and 119, or 2 percent, eligible for reduced-price lunches.
One of the challenges listed by Andress is to "study needs of student subgroups, especially low social-economic and diverse students."
Dubowsky said the district needs "something to crack this." Referring to the number of students failing the English test, he said, "It scares me."

Andress had started her information with the results of the Regents exams, which high-school students must pass in order to graduate. Last year, 94 percent of Guilderland graduates, or 407 students, earned Regents diplomas; 63 percent earned an advanced designation. The total number of graduates for both January and June was 432.

Sixty-nine percent went on to four-year colleges and 24 percent went to two-year colleges. The rest went into the military, got jobs, pursued other education or hadn’t made plans.
Last year, 94 percent of the Guilderland seniors passed their English Regents exam, scoring 65 or higher, and 64 percent were deemed "advanced," meaning they had scores of 85 to 100 percent on the test.
Dubowsky said a grade of 65 percent for students heading "into the college environment is not where we want to be."
"This is one test," said Andress, who often characterizes standardized exams as a "snapshot" of a student’s performance.
She began the presentation of this year’s report card, saying, "It isn’t the entire picture of a student’s progress." She went on to itemize other values she often emphasizes such as love of learning, performance skills, and habits of mind and character that lead to successful living in a democracy and are not represented in the report card.

Board member Peter Golden asked what explained the 12 percent jump in the English test in eighth grade.
"For one thing, it’s a different group of children than the year before," said Andress. She also said that "a fair amount of focus" was put on test-taking strategies.
Referring to the traditional middle-school dip in scores, compared to elementary and high-school scores, board member Colleen O’Connell asked, "If New York State, the Suburban Council, and Guilderland all take a dip, why doesn’t someone think it’s the test""
"Always the important thing to look at is the exit grade, the high-school grade," said Andress.
"I was disappointed in the state for putting so much effort into developing data and so little effort into telling us what the data means," said school board President Richard Weisz.
"Has the state come up with any guidance to school districts and taxpayers"" he asked of evaluating the test results. "This is our report card. What is our grade""
"A-plus," responded Andress with a smile. She then went on, "You have to be careful. Florida is grading schools and it gets into socio-economics."

Weisz said that the report card does not make it clear if the district has good material to start with and is doing great or it has good material to start with and is not doing well.
"What does this tell the taxpayers"" he asked. "Where do we need to spend money""
Superintendent Gregory Aidala said, "We look at the data for individual student performance to see what an individual child needs to succeed....making sure every student has an opportunity to improve...That’s something the test data are showing us."