School leaders mull over middle school math scores

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Preliminary results from the latest round of Standards of Learning testing and updates on the county’s burgeoning gifted education program headlined a busy Wythe County School Board meeting Wednesday morning.
Sixth- and seventh-grade math scores at the district’s three middle schools continued to be the school system’s clearest weakness – although pass rates did improve on five of the six troublesome tests.
“We have come a long way,” said LaDonna Meade, the school system’s director of instruction.
Rural Retreat Middle School’s seventh-grade math scores were the only ones that declined, as the pass rate dropped from 53.8 percent in 2007 to 46.3 percent this spring.
RRMS’s sixth-grade math scores, on the other hand, showed the most improvement of the six tests, rising 8.7 percentage points compared to last year’s preliminary results.
But the figures remained worrisome as the highest pass rate – Scott Memorial Middle School’s 51.4 percent in seventh-grade math – was still well below the 2007-08 benchmark of a 75 percent pass rate.
Because of the low math scores, the county’s middle schools are expected to be accredited with warning, continuing their status from last year.
According to the Virginia Department of Education Web site, the designation means the schools are subject to academic reviews and have to institute improvement plans. After three years with the warning designation, additional programs and penalties are implemented.
All of the county’s elementary and high schools, though, remain fully accredited for 2008-09.
School Board Vice Chairman Chalmer Frye pinned the blame for the low sixth- and seventh-grade math scores on the tests themselves.
Frye pointed out that 2006-07 seventh-graders, who had a combined math pass rate of only 45.3 percent, managed to pass the eight-grade math tests this spring at a rate of 82.5 percent.
“Students can’t be that bad and that good overnight,” he said. “I think we have a bad test.”
“It’s not the kids and I don’t think it’s the teachers,” Frye continued. “I’ll still say it’s the test.”
Meade acknowledged that aligning classroom curriculum to the sixth- and seventh-grade math tests has been a challenge, but she said that ultimately the school system can’t make excuses.
“In the end it is what it is,” she said about the tests. “We have to meet the standard regardless.”
As the county continues to work through its middle school math difficulties, the overall SOL data showed many encouraging scores.
The school division recorded 553 perfect scores, continuing an upward march from 282 in 2005, 445 in 2006 and 492 in 2007.
All classes that received 100 percent pass rates (excluding Rural Retreat High School’s perfect rate in world geography, which resulted from only one student taking and passing the test) were repeat successes from 2007.
Speedwell Elementary School’s third-grader history students, RRHS’s chemistry students and RRMS and Fort Chiswell Middle School’s Algebra 1 students each recorded 100 percent pass rates for the second consecutive year.
The district’s biggest improvement came at Jackson Memorial Elementary School on the U.S. History I test.
After only 12 out of 30 students (40 percent) passed the test in 2007 based on the initial numbers, the 2008 preliminary scores show the school’s pass rate more than doubling, increasing 43.3 percentage points to 83.3 percent as 30 out of 36 students made a passing score in 2008.
Max Meadows Elementary School and Sheffey Elementary School also had reasons to celebrate.
Max Meadows’ fourth-grade reading pass rate jumped by 19.4 percentage points to 92.3 percent – and even that improvement was trumped by a 23 percentage point increase in fifth-grade reading and a 32.6 percentage point increase in fourth-grade math.
Sheffey’s overall math pass rate increased by 20.2 percentage points, going from a middling 75.2 percent in 2007 to a stellar 95.4 percent in 2008.
While the county’s elementary schools accounted for some of the district’s biggest improvements, the trend didn’t hold for Rural Retreat Elementary School.
Compared to last year’s preliminary results, RRES saw large drops in both third-grade reading and science pass rates, which plummeted 21.9 and 18.1 percentage points, respectively.
After ranking in the middle of the pack in 2007 among the county’s six elementary schools in the four subject areas of English, math, science and history, RRES fell to the bottom in each category based on this year’s initial results.
Despite some of RRES’s setbacks, the school does remain fully accredited and saw small gains in its overall math and history scores.
“Our scores in the spring gave us a lot of areas to celebrate and also an opportunity to make some needed changes,” Meade said in summarizing the overall results.
In the midst of making sure that no child gets left behind, the school system also has been working to develop more opportunities for its gifted and talent students.
Wesley Poole, the district’s supervisor of federal programs and middle school education, reported that seventh-grade gifted students will have two new six-week enrichment units available for the 2008-09 school year.
Last year, an expanded gifted and talented program started in the county with all gifted sixth- and seventh-grade students taking a crime scene investigation unit and a geocaching/cartography unit.
For the 2008-09 school year, the gifted sixth-graders again will take the CSI and mapping courses, while the gifted seventh-graders (who took last year’s gifted classes as sixth-graders in 2007-08) will be challenged by a stock market game course and a unit where the students write, plan, direct, produce and act in their own play.
The gifted middle school students take the courses by opting out of two of the six standard “exploratory” class rotations throughout the year.
Poole also said that the school system is looking to improve opportunities for gifted elementary school students this year.
In addition to teaching the middle school units, Anne Harrison, the district’s gifted and talented resource teacher, will be spending time at elementary schools in the mornings.
Efforts this year will focus on gifted fifth-grade students as the fifth-grade teachers will be surveyed and interviewed to determine how best to help them reach their brightest students.
Plans call for the school system to purchase two computer programs – Rosetta Stone and Zoo Tycoon – that will give the gifted fifth-graders challenging – and fun – activities that require limited extra attention from busy classroom teachers.
“This will allow gifted and talented students to take part in activities outside the parameters of classroom instruction, which are not seen as additional work, when they have free time,” explains Poole’s summary letter on the updates to the gifted and talented program.
Rosetta Stone is a foreign language program, while Zoo Tycoon will allow students to design, build and manage their own virtual zoo.
Prior to Poole’s presentation, the School Board also heard an update on a potential health insurance plan for the district’s school bus drivers.
The School Board asked to hear bus drivers’ reaction to the plan before deciding whether to purchase it. Superintendent Albert Armentrout also said that it would be difficult to add the cost to this year’s budget, so he recommended that the issue be reconsidered in preparing the 2009-10 school year budget.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .