Teachers asked to develop interventions for struggling students as part of school-wide goal to improve scores
By Anne Trautner
Assistant Editor
Students at Sharon Community School and Walworth Joint School District 1 fell behind the state average in reading, but scored above the state average in social studies on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
On the reading portion of the WKCE, 18.2 percent of the third-graders from Sharon and 28 percent of Walworth third-graders scored proficient or advanced in reading, compared to the state average of 34.6 percent. For fourth grade, Sharon had 11.1 percent scoring proficient or advanced in reading and Walworth had 41.2 percent, while the state had 36.3 percent.
Walworth school administration will use the WKCE data to write goals for next year, said Walworth Joint School District 1 Interim Principal Brent Wilson. The district hopes to improve reading scores and close the gap in student achievement, he said.
“We want to compare apples to apples, because it is difficult to compare one third grade with another third grade class because they are different students,” Wilson said.
This year’s eighth grade class at Walworth School had a drop in reading scores over the last several. When those students were in sixth grade two years ago, 28.9 percent scored proficient or advanced in reading. That percentage dropped to 27.3 percent last year, and was down further this year with 24 percent of the eighth-graders scoring proficient or advanced.
This year’s state average for eighth-graders scoring proficient or advanced in reading was 33.9 percent.
“The one thing that we try to keep in mind is this is one snapshot of how well our students are doing,” Wilson said. “We have multiple ways to check performance with our students. Some students don’t do well taking tests, they have test anxiety and that sort of thing. We do look at the scores, they are important to us. However, we do recognize that it is one snapshot into their success as a student.”
In social studies, 98 percent of Walworth fourth-graders and 96.3 percent of Sharon fourth-graders scored well above the state average of 91.8 percent scoring proficient or advanced.
Fontana Joint 8 had 100 percent of its fourth-graders scoring proficient or advanced in social studies, while 100 percent of students in both fourth and eighth grades at Linn Joint 6 School District scored proficient or advanced in social studies.
In recent years, Walworth Grade School has concentrated on improving math scores, Wilson said.
“The last couple years we have really put a focus on math. We have stressed that our intervention time was heavily math focused. We had a lot of different things, our whole focus was math, we wanted to improve those math scores,” Wilson said.
Walworth had 54.9 percent of its fourth-graders scoring advanced or proficient in math, above the state average of 52 percent, while 34 percent of the eighth-graders scored proficient or advanced in math, still below the state average of 46.3 percent.
“This year, our focus is on reading. We realized that we need to get those reading scores up,” Wilson said. “We have asked that our teachers develop interventions for struggling students. We have made it a school-wide goal to improve our reading scores.”
The school is using new reading curriculum this year, and teachers are reporting that it is making a difference, Wilson said.
Wisconsin schools will continue using the WKCE to evaluate student achievement in social studies and science for grades four and eight.
However, in the fall, Wisconsin schools will use a new, computer-based test, called Smarter Balanced, to assess students in other subjects. This online test will pose new challenges compared to the traditional paper and pencil test, Wilson said.
“It is a whole new set of problems just getting our students ready for a completely different test. We will be teaching computer skills to our students at an earlier age so that when they get to third grade they will be prepared for taking the test. We want to take the variable out of not being familiar with the computer so that it is just a knowledge test for them, and not a test of how well can I use this computer,” Wilson said.
