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RANDOLPH – Randolph students are making the grade when it comes to standardized testing.
High School Principal Brandi Bartels and Elementary Principal Denton Beacom presented the latest data to school board members and its regular meeting last week, reflecting mostly positive trends in which students are meeting or exceeding state and national benchmarks.
At the high school level, students in grades 7-10 are exceeding the national average in math, reading, language usage and science through the Measures of Academic Progress (MAPS) testing.
The Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) standardized test indicated students in seventh and eighth grades tested above the state and regional scores in language usage, however missed the mark slightly in math.
“We are a little bit below state averages for math,” Bartels said. “This is somewhat misleading because not all schools have to take the NSCAS Growth in the fall. All schools do have to take it in the spring but for the fall it is a choice. I’m not completely surprised by the math, a lot of research shows that students tend to regress over breaks in school . . .it’s applicable to summer break. Students tend to regress more in math than in any other subject.”
Bartels said she expects scores to increase with the next testing with successful student interventions.
At the elementary, students’ Achievement Improvement Monitoring System (AIMS) testing indicated 57 percent of students were above the 41st percentile in reading, and 63 percent achieved that result in math.
“With only one full year under the new math curriculum, I was very happy with where we started out this year with some summer regression,” Beacom said.
In Nebraska Reads ACT testing, 63 percent of students in kindergarten through third grade were meeting standards and did not need an Individualized Reading Improvement Plan.
“If we would’ve tested kindergarten a few weeks later, we would’ve been in a lot better shape,” Beacom said. “Kindergarten had a lot of kids on improvement plans and they just didn’t have preschool, foundational knowledge, some of them.”
The state is pushing for every third grader to meet reading benchmarks, Beacom said. Seventeen out of 20 third graders are already meeting those at the start of the academic year, he said.
Along with favorable standardized testing scores, elementary parents deserve a gold star for attendance at recent parent-teacher conferences, Beacom said.
Parent attendance was the highest its ever been with a total of 98 percent participation.
Kindergarten, second grade, fifth grade and sixth grade all achieved 100 percent parent participation in conferences, he said.
