Published: August 28, 2008 11:50 am         

District improves its test scores

Three schools fail to reach goals

DANVILLE — Danville District 118 Superintendent Nanette Mellen shared overall district test score data at the board meeting Wednesday.

The district improved in all areas, but failed to make adequate yearly progress because African-American student reading scores didn’t meet the target of 62.5 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards. The black reading scores for the district were at 56.6 percent meeting or exceeding.

Students in all other demographic categories, including ethnic subgroups, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students showed growth and met standards.

Overall, reading scores were up 6 percent and math scores were up 2.9 percent. The district exceeded overall reading standards by 4.3 percent and math standards by 13.1 percent.

Only three schools in the district did not make AYP: Danville High School, Cannon Elementary School and Meade Park Elementary School.

Last year, North Ridge and South View Middle Schools, East Park Elementary School, Southwest Elementary School and DHS all failed to make AYP.

That only three schools failed to make AYP shows strong growth, but the district continues to work on improvement, Mellen said.

Gaining Southwest, East Park and both middle schools is cause for celebration, she added. The schools that did make AYP were East Park, Edison, Garfield, Liberty, Northeast, Southwest and the middle schools.

Although South View did make AYP, the district will move forward with its plans to restructure the school and will imple-ment many of the changes at North Ridge. The changes include flex periods and teaching methods targeted to state and testing standards. Last year’s low scores at South View required that the district restructure the school.

Several schools showed significant growth in meeting or exceeding standards. East Park gained almost 9 percent in students meeting and exceeding in reading. Garfield showed an almost 15 percent growth in reading standards.

South View gained 10 percent in the number of students who met or exceeding in reading and DHS gained more than 9 percent in reading and more than 13 percent in math.

Elementary school principals will examine some areas that showed decline this week.

Cannon lost almost 7 percent of students who met or exceeded in reading, but gained more than 5 percent in math. Meade Park lost almost 8 percent of students who met or exceeded in reading and more than 8 percent in math. Last year, Meade Park showed some of the most significant gains in AYP over the previous year. Northeast lost just more than 8 percent of students who met or exceeded in reading and lost 3.4 percent in math.

DHS showed significant growth. In reading, the school gained more than 9 percent of students meeting or exceeding in reading and more than 13 percent in math.

Black student scores at DHS also jumped.

In reading, black student scores jumped almost 19 percent in meeting or exceeding standards and almost 24 percent for math.

Although the percentages are much higher than last year’s, the percentage of students who met or exceeded was not high enough to comply with standards. In reading, overall scores at DHS were 54 percent meeting or exceeding and 52.7 percent for math. Target AYP percentages were 62.5 for all categories.

Complete reports that show how specific demographic subgroups of students did on the high school Prairie State Achievement Exam and the grade school and middle school Illinois Standards Achievement Test will be released soon.

Mellen said she wanted the schools’ faculties to review the complete information before releasing it to the public.

Associate Superintendent Mark Denman said the district will continue working hard on boosting scores.

Next year’s AYP target will be 70 percent meeting and exceeding standards. This year’s target was 62.5 per cent.

Board President Randal Ashton said he was pleased with the significant progress, but hopes that one day test scores won’t be such a significant discussion.

“I look forward to the day when we’re not talking about test scores,” he said, and the district’s graduation rate is 100 percent.