By Katie Wildes and Polina Noskova
Local schools this week saw improvement in their accreditation rankings across Rockbridge County for the 2014-15 school year.
The higher rankings may partly reflect changes to Standards of Learning (SOL) test operations that were implemented earlier this month. Still, area schools in the past few years initiated a number of focused interventions designed to raise student achievement.
A year ago, four Rockbridge County schools were accredited “with warning” for 2013-14:
- Fairfield Elementary
- Central Elementary
- Natural Bridge Elementary
- Maury River Middle School
This year, all are fully accredited except for Natural Bridge, which remains “accredited with warning.”
The rankings were released on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Accreditation requires meeting a certain level of pass rates for the students in a school.
Accreditation with warning requires a school improvement plan. Schools in this category meet with a coach from the state Department of Education regularly throughout the school year, and they must demonstrate progress within their plan.
The new accreditation rankings, based on SOL test scores that were released in August, showed an overall rebound after the tests were toughened three years ago and scores dropped. Statewide scores in math and reading increased by five percentage points, while scores in history and science increased by two percentage points.
Stronger Testing Initiatives
In 2013-14, Central Elementary School was accredited with warning in reading, but this year scores in both reading and math improved. Central is now fully accredited in both subjects.
Central, a modern county school tucked behind Kroger in Lexington, has to meet a benchmark pass rate of 75 percent for English. For the 2013-14 school year it had a 63 percent pass rate, but this past spring it was at 84 percent.
In math, Central cleared the 72 percent passing benchmark rate in 2013-14, but jumped to 91 percent in 2014-15.
Central Elementary Assistant Principal Robin Parker said that one reason for this improvement was the ability for the school to give expedited retakes for students who got a 375 or above on their tests, just shy of the 400 required to pass.
Parker said the changes are a result of Central’s success with addressing individual students’ needs for the SOLs.
Every grade level has a built-in time during the school day for working in smaller groups or one-on-one with instructors. These sessions last either an hour or half an hour, depending on grade level. This is for students who need help.
At the same time, other students get an enrichment program or intervention, as needed, so all students benefit. The four teachers for each grade level each take a small group of students, with one group focusing on enrichment, one on intervention, and two with students who are on grade level.
Focusing on kids and numbers
Although this program has been going on for several years, Parker said the instruction has grown more purposeful with the instructors focusing on the needs of the kids and using more data.
“There was always a plan each day for what was going to be done and it was really purposeful,” Parker said.
This is also the second year that teachers in third, fourth and fifth grade (the grades in which students take SOLs) are teaming up in pairs to focus on one main content area of the SOL and then either social studies or science. The two teams switch students back and forth.
Parker said this contributed to the higher test scores by having more focused instruction with smaller groups, rather than having four subjects to plan on.
“SOLs are one test that’s given one day of the year. So it’s hard because we have students that come from lots of different backgrounds and they might not be having a great testing day. So it’s hard to say that everything they know is going to happen on that one day of testing,” Parker said.
She added that having a wide range of abilities amongst students is always a challenge.
Special education student performance has been a challenge as well, and continues to be a challenge in the area. Central has a new initiative this year focusing on improving the special education pass rates as well.
Another factor in improving test scores may be that students now have fewer tests to take.
In the spring of 2014 a bill was passed in Richmond eliminating science and social studies SOL tests for third grades, cutting their state-mandated test load in half.
In total the bill eliminates five tests in elementary and middle schools, reducing the total number from 22 to 17. Instead school districts must provide alternative, project-based assessments to show that students are still learning the same material.
Parker said that she expects there will be more guidelines from the state down the road on these alternative assessments.
The bill sailed through the House of Delegates and was approved by the Senate in April 2014. Both local representatives, Del. Ben Cline (R) and Sen. Creigh Deeds (D), voted for its passage.
Maury River Middle School, accredited last year with warning, has now earned full accreditation after a school improvement plan was put into place. Each month the school submits to the state evidence that it is continuing to stay on top of their scores and implement new strategies for making their scores even better.
Principal Randy Walters said that the school’s biggest implementation was a focus on writing beyond English and language arts classes. Students were writing in every class, whether it be physical education or study hall.
“We adopted a template that all students follow,” Walter said. “It was a paragraph template and basically worked with kids on how to strike a good paragraph and implement new writing strategies to use in all our classes.”
The initiative brought the writing SOL pass rate up from 69 to 81 percent.
Changes in the System
On Oct. 22, the Virginia Department of Education voted to change the way accreditation is given. Rockbridge County School Superintendent Jack Donald said the changes brought the accreditation back to how it was in the early 2000s.
“The standards and scores were based on a variety of categories. It was scaffolding that allowed, if you were within so many points of the benchmark requirement, to get a conditional accreditation or provisional accreditation.”
Until now, the accreditation was based on a narrow scale where a school had to meet the exact benchmark required. But provisional accreditation has been put back in place.
If a school does not earn full accreditation, you are required to do a school improvement plan — and even once a school regains full accreditation, it must continue to implement this school improvement plan on a two- to three-year cycle.
Often, a school can predict where it stands before the official results are released. This year, Natural Bridge Elementary was expected to continue the programs put in place last school year.
“Because the scores weren’t where they needed to be, they ended up being one of the lowest 10 percent performances of schools in the state,” Donald said. As a result, the school was designated a focus school.
A focus school is required by the state to make certain improvements. A consultant from the state comes to monitor and guide the progress each month. New reading programs were put into place as well as a focus on writing curriculum. The staff number was increased, more regular testing was put in place, and instruction has been emphasized to balance the teaching and testing.
Rockbridge County has 1,177 students, with 43.3 percent qualifying for free and reduced lunch for the 2014-15 school year. This indicator of family income is highly correlated with student achievement in a school or system, no matter how effective the teaching.
Problems with the Accreditation
Lexington School Superintendent Scott Jefferies feels the timing of the test results may not be best for the schools. At this time, a quarter of the school year is over and curriculum is planned out. It is difficult to change the plan.
Another problem in his eyes is the difficulty schools have while improving. Schools may be increasing in scores over the years, but despite making large strides, are not hitting that requirement yet and are accredited with warning or not at all.
“We see ‘warning.’ That means to families ‘Stay away.’ So why would you want that associated with a school?” Jefferies said. This is particularly frustrating when, in fact, the school is showing improvement.
“So you’re going to start seeing verbiage that indicates the school may not be meeting the standards and expectations in terms of overall pass rates, but they are showing improvement over the past couple of years and are on the right track, doing the right thing, and getting there.”
Rockbridge County’s Donald discussed a similar issue around having new tests released every seven years. It takes time that first year for teachers to adjust to the new material and instructions. Usually the first year with the new test is not a direct reflection of the students, he said. But after a while the scores tend to increase.
The idea of teaching strictly to the test can be of concern. The pressure to teach to the test is what Donald sees as a disadvantage.
“It would limit in my mind the instruction that you’re dealing with because it would narrow down just those types of questions,” Donald said. “We don’t have copies of the test. The tests change every year to a certain degree and some years it changes considerably. So it should be difficult if not impossible to teach the test. “