School Committee Discusses Ways to Use NECAP Data to Improve Proficiency, Graduation Rates

Tuesday night's school committee meeting shed light on recent testing scores and how Newport Public Schools can use data from standardized tests to modify teaching and improve proficiency and graduation rates.  Director of Curriculum and Instruction Caroline A. Frey briefed the committee on the district-wide overview of students' NECAP scores and how they correlated to other Rhode Island towns.

“We're seeing what goes on in the day to day and we need to reteach," she said. "We're beginning to use the data. We need to become better at having a tool kit of interventions that are appropriate."

Grade 11 had significant drops in math with large gaps in algebra and statistics and 50 percent scoring partially proficient in writing. Grade eight reading, writing and math showed gains and was consistent with state numbers, while the state out-performed the district in all areas of grade seven testing. All grades with test data, which include third through eighth, and eleventh grades, had the goal to reduce the percentage of 1s, the lowest possible outcome, scored. 

Committee member Charles Shoemaker pointed out that students who were “white and not economically disadvantaged” had significantly higher scores on testing than the minorities or students living below the poverty line. “It's a trend all the way through the school system,” he said.

“I don't know the answer, but it's something that's easy to gloss over and say it's a homogenous group. It's not,” Shoemaker said. “It's not fair to let a kid go through the high school when not even 50 percent of their group isn't proficient.”

Chairman Patrick Kelley agreed that the achievement gap was an issue the school committee needs to address.

Committee member Sandra J. Flowers said it was important to “teach to the whole student" and look at other factors that may cause low test scores. She suggested there could be commonalities between those who score 1s and 2s other than race, economic background and where there live, but rather specific issues that cause particular academic problems.

“They have a great intelligence, but they may have a lot of baggage that they carry that impacts their achievement,” Flowers said. “I'm hoping this doesn't exist anywhere, but could there be some self-fulfilling prophecy where some are expected to do well and some aren't?"

Flowers also said she wondered if some students understand the consequences of not achieving. Suggestions to combat the achievement gap were to go back and reteach students who have difficulties with the materials, which has been easier with NWEA testing, Frey said. She also said one of the most noticeable gaps is the transition from eighth grade to the high school.

“Maybe there's something else we need to do that wouldn't involve academic intervention, but rather behavioral,” she said. “Teachers are extremely concerned about how well kids do, the kids are linked to their job and they feel that.”

Goals to improve academic proficiency regarding the collected data include filling the gaps in the core curriculum in language arts and improve intervention procedures at the elementary level, progress monitoring and rewriting the math and language arts curriculum around the common core standards at the middle school level, and implementing a response to intervention practice and further use of NWEA professional development at the high school level.