Washtenaw County school leaders highlight successes in MEAP scores
Annette Stojcevich gets fourth-grade students ready for a science experiment at Abbot Elementary in Ann Arbor.
Mark Bialek | For AnnArbor.com
Fourth-graders gathered into three groups around the room Friday, chatting excitedly as they squished putty into different shapes and dropped them into beakers of water.
The students in Annette Stojcevich’s class at Ann Arbor’s Abbot Elementary School then measured how much water was being displaced by each shape.
It’s those types of hands-on activities and individual attention that helped propel Abbot’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, educators at the school say.
“It’s really a focus on individual students and working with them to make sure they are all hitting the targets they need to,” said Abbot Principal Patti Barnes.
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Abbot wasn’t the only school across the area to see gains in test scores, numbers released Friday show.
In total, average scores for Washtenaw County students - both those in traditional districts and charter schools - rose in every grade from three to nine and in every category in those grades. The only exception was three tests - math, reading and science - taken by eighth graders.
At Abbot, third-grade reading climbed nearly 11 percent. District administrators touted the scores as an example of how its Title I program, which focuses in on helping students who are poor, can supplement the district’s standard curriculum.
In Saline, scores were up in nine of 16 categories, stayed the same in four and went down slightly in three.
“We want to make sure we keep moving forward and being innovative and creative,” said Steve Laatsch, the district’s assistant superintendent for instructional services. “Every one of our MEAP scores is 90 percent or higher proficiency, so that’s a pretty telling state.”
The increases in scores locally were generally mirrored across the state, the department of education said in a press release that stressed notable gains in reading.
According to the state, student reading scores on the MEAP test rose in all grades compared to the previous year.
Statewide, students gained 3 percent to 8 percent in every grade except fourth, where the gain was 1 percent. Ninety percent of third graders, 84 percent of fourth graders and 85 percent of fifth grade students attained basic proficiency.
Students in sixth grade climbed from 80 percent to 88 percent, seventh graders increased three points to 82 percent and eighth graders increased from 76 percent to 83 percent.
For the fifth consecutive year since Michigan began implementing more rigorous K-8 grade level content expectations, math scores for students in grades 3-6 have continued to rise. The largest gains occurred among low-income students, students of color, those with limited English proficiency, and students with disabilities, the state said.
Topping the achievement for students on the math test, 95 percent of Michigan third-graders attained basic proficiency in math, while 92 percent of fourth graders, 79 percent of fifth graders, and 82 percent of sixth graders also met the basic proficiency levels set for math, the state said. Math scores for seventh and eighth graders declined slightly after four consecutive years of growth.
The Milan school district also saw growth in its scores.
“The test data demonstrates that the implementation of new reading and math initiatives over the past five years are having a positive effect on our elementary scores,” Superintendent Bryan Girbach said.
Reham Imran raises her hand as third-grade teacher Laura Publiski asks a question at Abbot Elementary in Ann Arbor.
Mark Bialek | For AnnArbor.com
Laatsch said the gains in similar areas makes him slightly skeptical of how much gain is from changing the test.
“We always do wonder, is the test changing? It’s sometimes hard to interpret the success of the MEAP,” he said. “It does appear a majority seems to be moving up.”
Dexter Superintendent Rob Glass said test scores show more than 90 percent of Dexter students meet the basic proficiency standards for the state. But a deeper look at the data shows the district needs to continue emphasizing writing across the curriculum, he said.
“Our intensive training in math instruction also seems to be yielding good results,” Glass said. “We aim for much deeper instruction than that which can be measured on a test such as MEAP, so while we are pleased with these excellent scores, we realize that they don't even begin to the full story about the quality of our educational experience.”
All local districts saw at least one grade level or subject that experienced a decrease.
In Manchester, scores in nine of 15 areas - or for 60 percent of the scores released -showed improvement, Superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin said.
“While we saw an overall improvement in our scores, there were a handful of areas in which our scores declined,” Lewis-Lakin said. “We can not gloss over these areas. Rather, our challenge now is to learn why and to work to improve the instructional issues we identify in the process.”
At Abbot, Barnes and her teachers will use the scores to look at how they’re teaching individual students. They’ll also use it to look for trends across grades where there might be holes or weak spots in the curriculum.
But the real hope is that they’ll see growth in students.
“There’s room for growth even in the students who are scoring proficient,” Barnes said. “You can score advanced. We want to see growth and we’re seeing that.”
Erica Hobbs of AnnArbor.com contributed to this report.
David Jesse covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at davidjesse@annarbor.com or at 734-623-2534.
Comments
sh1
Thu, Mar 18, 2010 : 6:51 a.m.
Rork, evidence against your statement that teachers aren't sophisticated enough to understand statistics? I think the onus is on you to prove once you make a statement like that.
Rork Kuick
Wed, Mar 17, 2010 : 7:11 a.m.
You got any evidence against? 1) Try looking at this open letter from the Michigan education association (Teacher's union): www.mea.org/members/pdf/120709-rtti_letter.pdf and search their web site with "test scores" to see more stuff. I'd also submit as evidence that we cannot see that data. 2) Mathematicians have been complaining about math education for years. Try http://mathematicallycorrect.com/ such as the articles by Frank Allen or Douglas Carnine. My daughter's class and book teaches that the square root of 2 is irrational and what the volume of sphere's are, both without proof, and what's worse, without even apology or notice that "but please notice we aren't proving that". I don't want people who know square root of 2 is irrational cause they were told so, I want people who immediately ask "why is that so". I submit if I tell a class of 9th graders that pi is irrational, there's only a 50% chance that even one would ask "how do you know that". 3) I recently looked and found http://www.air.org/news/default.aspx#mathPerformance which shows Michigan's 4th and 8th graders rank about 30th and 35th compared to other states. Massachusetts ranked best. I'm not saying I know why.
sh1
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 : 5:29 p.m.
Rork, as a self-desribed "evidence Nazi," could you please cite evidence for your following statements: "I generally find teachers criticizing the imagined methods of data analysis, because the simple models they think of are indeed liable to not be very good, but that's partly just their lack of sophistication about what a reasonable statistical model would look like. They conclude that having more data is bad, which is anti-science." And "As someone who uses math at work every day, I also propose that the math education our kids are getting now is watered down, even compared to the math I took in school about 30 years ago."
Lisa Starrfield
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 : 11:16 a.m.
anonymous, I do. I know of several teachers removed from the classroom for performance. It IS possible to remove 'bad' teachers; there is simply a procedure which must be followed.
alarictoo
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 : 8:33 a.m.
@Alan Cook: Nice advertisement. However, many children, quite honestly, would, as you so prosaically put it, "check out," as they would have little interest in the "building of a bungalow".
Rork Kuick
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 : 7:15 a.m.
sh1: Good teachers get progress even out of "needy" students, and if I could see the student's previous year's scores I could try to account for how many students like that there were in each class. I don't want to compare test scores, I want to study the differences in test scores from year to year, perhaps modeling the possibility that lower scorers show less progress on average (if that is true). I generally find teachers criticizing the imagined methods of data analysis, because the simple models they think of are indeed liable to not be very good, but that's partly just their lack of sophistication about what a reasonable statistical model would look like. They conclude that having more data is bad, which is anti-science.
Anonymous Due to Bigotry
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 10:14 p.m.
piziks: The problem is not so much teachers as a whole as it is with the bureaucracy and administration that sets up the rules such that individual teachers have no choice but to do things like "teach to the test." While I'm not a teacher, my mother was a teacher and I know all about the fundamental problem-causing issues that nobody is willing to address. For example, it needs to be possible to fire incompetent teachers and I personally don't know of a single school system where it's possible to do so. Does anyone know of a case of a teacher being fired for anything short of sexual abuse or assaulting a student? Instead of addressing fundamental causes of problems like the inability to fire incompetent teachers, administrations would always rather do things like play games to make it impossible to identify the incompetent teachers while rigging the metrics to make the situation look better than it is. On the other hand, there's also the problem of parents refusing to accept any responsibility for their kids, but again it seems that the administration in most places is unwilling (or perhaps politically unable?) to fight back against unreasonable parental demands.
sh1
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 7:57 p.m.
@Rork: What about those teachers who volunteer to take more needy kids than their peers? It happens all the time. Yet, if we look only at MEAP scores it would appear those teachers aren't holding their weight.
Steven Harper Piziks
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 6:45 p.m.
You have to remember that when people howl about how Japanese, Chinese, and Indian kids beat American kids on math and science tests that in America, the No Child Left Behind law requires schools to test ALL students. Japan, China, and India have no such laws. In those countries, students who aren't academically inclined are put into apprenticeships, and special education students are either not tested or allowed in school at all. (Do you honestly think all those children in the slums of Calcutta are receiving high scores on math tests?) In our country, we test everyone, even the students who are so developmentally disabled they can barely hold a pencil, so naturally American scores are lower--we're comparing our entire population, warts and all, to their top students.
Alan Cook
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 4:36 p.m.
National math test scores continue to be disappointing. This poor trend persists in spite of new texts, standardized tests with attached implied threats, or laptops in the class. At some point, maybe we should admit that math, as it is taught currently and in the recent past, seems irrelevant to a large percentage of grade school kids. Why blame a sixth grade student or teacher trapped by meaningless lessons? Teachers are frustrated. Students check out. The missing element is reality. Instead of insisting that students learn another sixteen formulae, we need to involve them in tangible life projects. And the task must be interesting. A Trip To The Number Yard is a math book focusing on the building of a bungalow. Odd numbered chapters cover the phases of the project: lot layout, foundation, framing, all the way through until the trim out. The even numbered chapters introduce the math needed for the next stage of building and/or reviews the previous lessons. This type of project-oriented math engages kids. It is fun. They have a reason to learn the math they may have ignored in the standard lecture format of a class room. If we really want kids to learn math and to have the lessons be valuable, we need to change the mode of teaching. Our kids can master the math that most adults need. We cant continue to have class rooms full of math drudges. Instead, we need to change our tactics and teach math via real life projects. Alan Cook info@thenumberyard.com www.thenumberyard.com
Rork Kuick
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 2:33 p.m.
Your welcome Ed, but I wouldn't know who your kids were. That's what I mean by de-identified. It could be argued that we would be able to spot certain individuals, but you weren't saying anything that specific. There might be an issue, I admit. Then I might accept statistical summaries of the yearly progress like median, 25th and 75th percentiles. Currently the public has no idea how the teachers are doing, since they have no method to determine it. It's hard to compare schools too, since we aren't given measures of yearly progress.
Rork Kuick
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 10:21 a.m.
As an evidence Nazi, I would like individual (de-identified) scores for previous year and this year, organized by teacher. This permits one to estimate the progress. I believe most teachers are against that, or at least those favoring it are silent.. As someone who uses math at work every day, I also propose that the math education our kids are getting now is watered down, even compared to the math I took in school about 30 years ago. Just try giving math tests taken by Japanese kids to our kids. If we want good technical people, we will have to do better, and today, just being able to judge evidence for public policies requires better math skills, as illustrated by this data.
AMOC
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 10:02 a.m.
Tmo, with all due respect for your desire to foster independent thinking and iniative among Michigan students, "teaching to the test" or even better, teaching to a high and consistent standard curriculum is precisely what is needed at the elementary school level in order to accomplish that worthy goal. Students who have mastered reading for information, writing in standard formats, basic computation and the roots of mathematical thinking by third and fourth grade are appropriately prepared to use those skills first to learn, and then to use their knowledge of science, economics, law, and psychology to innovate and improve society. And when I say "mastery" of skills, I mean rote learning of the basics on the way to developing automatic and fluent use of those basics as enablers for higher levels of insight and analysis in later grades and for the rest of the student's life. A student still struggling to decode individual words can't develop insight into either historical or market trends from reading. A student who isn't fluent with addition and multiplication facts and their application to percentages will grow up to need a spreadsheet or a calculator to set prices or discounts and will be at a disadvantage in negotiations with someone who can do those calculations in their head. I agree with Lee Anne Dickinson-Kelley that what really matters for student success is the proportion who achieve this level of mastery, which the MEAP tests call "advanced proficient". Because of unintended consequences of NCLB rules which allow each state to determine their own standard, there has been a significant reduction in the level of knowledge Michigan students need to score "profficient" on the MEAPs. This is why student success on the MME and in post-high school training and education correlates much more closely with "advanced profficient" scores in earlier grades. The ACT/MME is constructed and scored by an independant, nation-wide organization, not directly controlled by political appointees as the MEAPs are.
Steven Harper Piziks
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 6:49 a.m.
Boy, the schools can't do anything right, can they? Elsewhere on this web site, people complain that teachers are overpaid and underworked, and that schools deserve budget cuts, and here, when the schools report a success, all we hear is complaining that they it's because they must be teaching to the test. They can't win.
Anonymous Due to Bigotry
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 : 1:50 a.m.
I agree with tmo. While some sort of process of accountability involving objective metrics is necessary, anything that encourages a strong priority on preparing students more for an artificial test rather than for a real world is far from ideal.
David Jesse
Sun, Mar 14, 2010 : 7:38 p.m.
I received an e-mail today from Lee Ann Dickinson-Kelley, the elementary administrator for the Ann Arbor school district. In it, she pointed out the rigor of the district's curriculum and how the advanced proficient percentages are higher than the state's average. She also pointed out that Title I services are "are for struggling learners not 'poor children'....the funding is based on above district average of free/ reduced lunch but the children served by Title I are academically at risk. In her e-mail she said: "It is due to this curricular rigor that our "advanced proficient" percentages out perform the state's statistics in a substantial manner. Now that is the story!!!!! For districts with high over all proficient/ advanced proficient scores the real work is to ensure that the number or children excelling in the most rigorous category is increasing (moving from proficient to advanced proficient). It is precisely this correlation (advanced proficiency) that aligns positively against success on the MME. You mentioned a number of districts who acknowledged over all high scores.....like Ann Arbor....but not once the purposeful emphasis on increasing "rigor". Lastly, a quick look at Abbot's growth over the years would obviously make their present achievement more than a "good news" story but one that reflects exactly what the federal government is looking for in the Race to the Top recommendations. This is a school that is dedicated to working hard--very hard---in the truest definition of a "professional learning community" to implement all aspects of the curriculum and do so together without excuse on behalf of all their children. Not only have they excelled in this but they put in place an exceptional enrichment program as well. Now, that is a great story!!! And one worth telling and celebrating."
tmo
Sun, Mar 14, 2010 : 6:51 p.m.
However tempting it is for the school districts to pat themselves on the back after seeing these results, there is a lot of 'teaching-to-the-test' that goes on that I find very discomforting. An emphasis on rote learning isn't a strategy that will prepare students to become entrepreneurs or innovators.