-10/19/ 2005 - Forest Leaves

Schools make state's grade
Willard performance declines

BY CHRIS LAFORTUNE
STAFF WRITER

All three of River Forest District 90's schools made adequate yearly progress on the state's standardized test this year, though performance slipped at Willard School.

Willard's score in reading dropped more than 12 percentage points, and in math by 6 points, compared to results in 2004, figures from the April Illinois Standards Achievement Test show.

Special needs students may have made the difference on performance at Willard, Superintendent Marlene Kamm said last week.

In third grade at reading, 11 students did not meet standards, Kamm said, nine of them special needs students.

"They had, actually, double the amount of Lincoln," Kamm said. "At Lincoln, six kids didn't meet in third grade," one of them a special needs student.

She noted that the test looks at performance by the same grades each year, not at the same group of students.

"There's going to be significant differences regardless of who the kids are," she said. "It's comparing apples to oranges."

Above averages

Nevertheless, all District 90 schools remained well above the targets set for them under the No Child Left Behind law. The federal act requires at least 47.5 percent of students must meet or exceed state standards in math and reading on the ISAT test this year.

The district's remaining two schools performed at levels close to the previous year.

At Lincoln School, performance in reading slipped by 3 percentage points, and in math, about one point, compared to the year prior. At Roosevelt, reading dropped 2 percent and math, 3 percent.

Scores are reported for the schools overall as well as by student subgroups, based on student ethnicity, income and disability.

Subgroups must contain at least 45 students to be tracked by the state. Only the white subgroups were large enough to be reported, and met this year's progress standard.

Last year, the minimum number of students in a subgroup was 40. Black students were the only other subgroup reported last year in District 90, and that was for the entire district, not by individual school.

Unrealistic goal

By 2014, 100 percent of students must meet or exceed state standards in reading and math throughout the country, under the federal law. The goal is lofty, Kamm said, and unrealistic.

"We have children with all different kinds of needs," she said. "They may reach their individual goal in terms of growth, but they may never reach the goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math and being at grade level."

Next school year, all students will be tested at every grade level. The ISAT has been taken only by third, fifth and eighth grade students.

The tests themselves will be new, Kamm said, creating a new baseline for districts to work from.

"This is the end of our ISAT comparison as we know it," she said. "For the last five or six years, we've been using the same assessment. As of this spring, it's a brand new ISAT, a brand new baseline and multiple grades."

Illinois State Board of Education Spokesman Mark Wancket said short response questions will be added to the math test, while on the reading test, some "how to" topics, which can include recipes, graphics, charts and maps, will be added.

"The reason for these changes is to more accurately gauge student achievement in regard to the Illinois learning standards," Wancket wrote in an e-mail Friday.

Chris LaFortune can be reached at clafortune@pioneerlocal.com.