Stanford 9 results
Local, state test scores climb for fourth year
By Sarah Garrecht Gassen and Hipolito R. Corella
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Stanford 9 scores across the state continued to creep upward for the fourth straight year, according to preliminary test results.
Pima County public schools mirrored the state trend except for fifth and ninth grades, in which scores dipped or remained the same for all but ninth-grade math.
Charter schools here had mixed results when compared with last year.
About 500,000 Arizona students in first through ninth grades took the Stanford 9 test last spring. It measures reading, language and math against the students' counterparts across the nation.
Scores are averaged by grade level and subject, with a score of 50 being average. Scoring a 55 would mean that 45 percent of students nationally scored higher.
»» Get easy-print (PDF) version of chart
State Superintendent of Schools Jaime Molera would not comment on Monday's preliminary numbers, saying he wants his office to analyze and verify the data first. The department is bound by law to put out the results by July 1, and the number-crunching should be complete by mid-July, he said.
"I just found out there are a couple districts who haven't seen the data yet" and haven't been able to check for accuracy, Molera said.
While the Arizona Department of Education has not had reports of widespread problems with the data, errors are possible, and at least one local error has been identified, said department spokesman Tom Collins.
Renate Krompasky, assistant superintendent at Flowing Wells School District, said testing officials have yet to account for scores for some 400 ninth-graders, a problem Collins said is expected to be corrected by the end of the week.
While districts have long used standardized test scores as a measure of progress, districts are under more pressure to do well this year. Under the accountability section of the new education sales tax legislation, test scores are one measure the state will use when deciding whether to label a school as underperforming.
Those schools will have a year to improve or they will be deemed failing; the state would then send in a team to help the schools improve or tell districts how to do it.
Molera said test scores alone will not be the determining factor. Rather, he will be looking for improvement in individual students' performances from year to year.
"If a school is getting kids and moving them up and accelerating, then that's a mark of success in my mind," Molera said.
Whether schools have done that is still unknown. David Garcia, director of research and policy, said the department will spend the next two weeks analyzing the scores.
Garcia said the data to be released in mid-July will focus on three areas:
* Reading levels between kindergarten and third grade.
* Middle school mathematics.
* Profiling the lowest-scoring students in the state.
While a formal analysis is not complete, some initial trends can be gleaned from the preliminary statewide data:
* In math, all grades beat the national average.
* All but two grades beat the national average in reading.
* Half the grades placed below the national average in language.
While the state has not analyzed the scores, districts have begun taking a critical look at their data - which is how Flowing Wells noticed the missing ninth-grade scores.
David Krueger, director of planning and assessment for Tucson Unified School District, has questions about the fifth and ninth grade scores statewide.
"At this point, I would interpret it very cautiously," Krueger said.
The fifth- and ninth-grade scores do not follow the same general improvement pattern as other grades in the district, which could signal a widespread testing problem, he said.
With about 63,000 students, Tucson Unified is the largest public school district in the county.
Part of testing's challenge is to transform what scores tell a school about its students into something useful in the classroom.
"It's always about assessing the whole instruction at your particular site," said Richard Hooley, associate superintendent at Amphitheater Public Schools.
"Some programs are enormously successful in one school, but not as successful at another school because of support, training or the population that is being served."
Amphi offers extra tutoring and summer school through federal grants, Hooley said. He is proud that Amphi's math scores have uniformly improved over last year.
"Most of the credit goes to good teaching, to teachers who have familiarized themselves with the standards," Hooley said. "Our greatest challenge is in the area of language - we need to do better."
First-graders took only the reading portion of the exam that the state began using in 1997. But that limited data confirms for Krompasky that Flowing Wells' efforts are paying off.
For example, she said first-graders at Walter Douglas Elementary had the highest reading scores in the district.
Krompasky said that shows the school is on track in its use of computer software and tutoring to help raise literacy.
Marana Unified School District scores went up in most grades and subjects compared to last year. Assistant Superintendent Ron Rickel said the district tracks students by grade level group - or cohort - and is now working to determine how big a change is needed to make a real difference.
"It appears the cohorts had an increase but not a significant increase," Rickel said.
Rickel said Marana will continue its current practice of school principals evaluating test scores and addressing weak spots with programs.
Students should already have their individual scores, but families should not look at test scores in a vacuum, Molera said.
"This is a piece of the puzzle - this will tell them how they're doing against kids across the country and the state," he said.
A low school score does not automatically mean a bad school, especially when a large influx of students new to a school or district can push scores down, Molera said.
"I don't think people should get hung up on the school scores," he said. "It doesn't mean they don't have a great program, a great curriculum.
"They really need to look at what's going on inside the school and what's happening there, not just at one snapshot," Molera said.
* Contact Sarah Garrecht Gassen at 573-4117 or sgassen@azstarnet.com.
* Contact Hipolito R. Corella at 573-4191 or corella@azstarnet.com.
Despite errors, state releases Stanford 9 results today
By Sarah Garrecht Gassen and Hipolito R. Corella
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Stanford 9 test results have been released - but officials warn that the results are only preliminary and mistakes have already been identified.
The Arizona Department of Education must release the scores by July 1 to comply with state law; this year, they're being released July 2 because the first is a Sunday.
Flowing Wells Unified School District has already identified a mistake: scores of about 400 ninth-graders who took the test this spring were not included in the district's scores, said Superintendent John Pedicone.
The district is working with testing company Harcourt Educational Measurement to get the correct scores by the end of next week, said Tom Collins, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education.
Pedicone said the district found the error after suspecting that the scores reported for its freshman class appeared too low.
He said the data reflected only the scores of students in alternative education programs.
Some charter school scores are also incorrect, and a "handful" of districts around the state have called the education department to report errors or missing data, Collins said.
"We're working with Harcourt to get those things fixed, but the situation remains that this is exactly why we consider the data we plan to release on Monday as preliminary," Col-lins said.
It appears the problem is with calculating and reporting total school or district scores, not the test itself, he said.
District leaders at Tucson Unified School District have declined to respond publicly to the preliminary test data the state has released.
"We'd like time to check for the accuracy of the data and be able to do a meaningful analysis of the data," said Toni Cordova, a TUSD spokeswoman.
The state Department of Education will check and analyze the test data and plans to issue a verified report in mid-July, Collins said.
* Contact Sarah Garrecht Gassen at 573-4117 or at sgassen@azstarnet.com.
* Contact Hipolito R. Corella at 573-4191 or at corella@azstarnet.com.
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