OXFORD – High school students in SAD 17 were much closer to the state average on test scores than fourth-graders in last year’s Maine Educational Assessment testing.
“It looks like our kids do worse in the fourth grade and by the 11th grade they catch up,” SAD 17 board member Mike Brown noted during a report on the 2002-03 scores Monday by Curriculum Director Kathy Elkins.
Elkins confirmed Brown’s observation, and said the district has been busy revising fourth-grade curriculums to meet the challenge.
“They are not overly stellar scores,” Elkins said. When compared with three-year averages, however, the scores for fourth-, eighth- and 11th-graders are essentially the same, she added.
Starting in March, fourth-graders will be tested in fewer subject areas – reading, writing, math and sciences – so the state can focus on those areas in more depth, Elkins said.
The district has put in place several new curriculums to keep pace with the changing standards.
“We’re still trying to analyze this. It’s very complicated,” Elkins said.
Elkins said MEA test scores are only “one piece of the puzzle” in demonstrating how well students are doing in meeting Maine Learning Results standards.
However, the state has expanded and placed new emphasis on MEA test scores, and the district must follow the state’s lead, Eastman said.
“Before, we didn’t see the MEA as a high-stakes test,” Eastman said. All that changed after passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, he said.
The scores of children with identified disabilities such as Down’s Syndrome now must be included with their classes in the results, even though doing so tends to lower the scores.
“They might be making progress at the first-grade level but are being tested at the fourth-grade level,” Eastman said. In other instances, fourth-graders are being tested in subject areas they haven’t learned yet, he added.
“Maine got caught a little bit because we set the bar very high,” said Eastman.
Elkins said the district needs to focus on individual students who scored 530 or less and intervene in a positive way to improve their learning ability.
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