Working Together to Improve RCSD Test Scores - Data Being Used to Improve Scores

The students in the Riverhead Central School District have been busy taking their English Language Arts assessment tests as mandated by the federal government’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that was signed into law in 2002.

This act has expanded the federal role in education and set requirements in place that affect every public school in America, including those in Riverhead, New York. NCLB ensures that students’ performance is measured annually to determine what progress is being made toward graduation.
As a result of this law, schools measure students’ performance, especially in grades 3 through 8, by administering NYS Assessments. In the High School, “Regents” Assessments are used to determine the students’ progress.

Each of the questions on the Assessments relate to NYS Learning Standards (e.g. com-prehension or inferencing skills) or expectations that New York State has for each student. For the most part, it is assumed that if a student correctly answers a particular question, that student demonstrates an understanding of the required Learning Standard that the question is designed to test.

Once the tests are administered and the scores are ascertained, the District collects detailed information, in the form of data, from the NYS Assessments. That data assists administrators, teachers and individual students in identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses as it relates to the Learning Standards.

The District’s administrators, schools and teachers are using this data to plan for the continual improvement of classroom instruction and student achievement. Facilitating the district in understanding the vast challenges from the masses of collected data is Jack Maroun, a Data Analyst employed through BOCES.

Mr. Maroun works three days a week for the Brentwood School District, one day a week for the Half Hollow Hills School District and on Fridays, he works for the Riverhead Central School District. His services include:

√ Identifying root causes related to student performance
√ Developing school or district profiles
√ Developing action plans and targets to improve student performance and classroom instruction
√ Facilitating team planning sessions to assist teachers with curriculum and/or grade level subject realignment
√ Working with principals to better understand New York State assessment results
√ Facilitating planning for School-wide Improvement.

Maroun’s detailed review of student Assessment responses provides a data analysis of the student’s strengths and weakness. The data is provided to the student’s present teacher and then it is transferred to the student’s new teacher for the following year.

“Mr. Maroun’s data analysis is an invaluable resource,” states Riverhead Middle School Principal Andrea Pekar. “He provides us with a massive amount of analysis and organizes and presents it in a way that then helps inform both our teachers and their students on how to improve.”

“Assessment drives instruction,” intoned middle school teacher Jennifer Frankel, who had been waiting to see Ms. Pekar.

As a result of the data collected, teachers can now tailor their teaching to meet the exact needs of the students they are working with. Teachers are expecting students to write an explanation of a mathematical process rather than simply supply a sum or a product. The use of comprehension exercises is becoming the rule rather than the exception after careful reinforcement from assessment data.

More real world application is the teacher’s responsibility. Riverhead schools are engaged in detailed lesson planning and curriculum writing.

Teachers spend their days dealing with various forms of assessment data. They observe student behavior, compare a project to a learning rubric or standard, mini-conference, listen to an answer given orally or in a written form and examine it for the elements of a correct response AND use the data from the NYS Assessments.

“The Riley Avenue School as a unit scores very high on the state assessments,” notes Riley Avenue Principal Dave Enos. “But the analysis Mr. Maroun provides helps us identify the areas where we could improve. In our case, inferencing is one of the standards that our students could improve. The analysis helps us to identify those skill areas. Teachers can then focus on these learning skills in their lesson plans.”

Teachers are finding many different ways to construct assessments. In the past few years, a push towards authentic assessment has become more evident.

Authentic assessment deals directly with real world application. It is a concerted effort to put an end to skills in isolation. Through authentic assessment, students begin to see the connection and understand they will use a particular concept or skill outside the school setting. Authentic assignments mimic skills that adults need to function in a literate society.

The bottom line is that TEST SCORES ARE UP! Teachers have seen their assessment results increase as a result of more effective and efficient use of data. Below is a chart that represents Riverhead’s proficiency compared to statewide public schools.