Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic

Even without school ratings, Newberg and St. Paul districts remain pleased with scores on new state assessment

Thanks to implementation of the Smarter Balanced assessment in the 2014-2015 school year, all districts and schools in the state are getting an “incomplete” on their report cards from the state.

Because results from Smarter Balanced, which appraises college and career readiness according the Common Core State Standards, cannot be compared to previous years of OAKS testing, academic growth cannot be accurately calculated and factored into scores for academic achievement.

In turn, those scores affect how ratings are tabulated, so this year’s report cards do not include overall ratings or comparison school ratings as the U.S. Department of Education granted Oregon a one-year exemption in light of the transition.

Last year’s results will be used as a baseline when school and district ratings are included on 2016 report cards.

In his report on student achievement to the Newberg School District board of directors Oct. 13, director of assessment and data Don Staples referred to last year, in terms of testing results and, correspondingly, this year in school report cards, as a reset year.

“That said, we still look at it and feel like we got some confirmation,” Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza said. “I’m grateful that our teachers made a commitment four years ago to learning Common Core and beginning to implement that in their classrooms.”

LeBlanc-Esparza believes the effort on the part of teachers to prepare students for the new assessment was reflected in the better-than-projected scores achieved by Newberg students when school and district scores were released last month.

Had ratings been included, Newberg High School in particular would have been virtually guaranteed a higher rating, after a small number of special education students did not take or finish the assessment in the 2013-2014 school year. That dropped their participation level in that subgroup below the 95 percent threshold, which automatically triggered a one-point drop in the school’s rating from a 3 to a 2 on the 2014-2015 report card.

Newberg did not have that problem on this year’s report card and LeBlanc-Esparza said the district has been working to implement systems that will prevent reoccurrences in the future.

“We were able to get all of our students through the process that needed to take the test,” she said. “We didn’t have to factor that into our ratios, so you got a more authentic sense of how we did participation wise and performance wise.”

St. Paul superintendent and elementary school principal Joe Wehrli also saw students in his district outperform state projects on Smarter Balanced and he credited the teachers.

“I think the piece for us, we have other assessments that we use,” Wehrli said. “This assessment is something we’re required to do and when we get that cumulative data over time it will be valuable to us, but right now we’re just pleased, especially for the kids for how they came through that testing.”

The Newberg School District just recently sent out individual student scores to parents and is encouraging them to address concerns by contacting teachers, including at parent conferences, which will begin in the coming weeks.

St. Paul sent out student scores Oct. 9 and hasn’t heard many parents voice concerns.

“Both the high school principal and I wrote letters that went out with that, saying please contact us or your teacher if you have any questions,” Wehrli said. “Feedback we’ve received so far has been positive.”

Wehrli said he believes the response indicates, at least in part, that the district did a good job communicating with families about the test. He added that the district’s small size allowed it to have a single district-wide testing window, which meant it could spread information to parents more uniformly.

He proudly noted that testing data, from both OAKS and Smarter Balanced, indicates St. Paul students increase their score each year, contributing to the high school’s 95.5 percent graduation rate for 2014-2015.

“Our program is really preparing kids to be successful on those assessments,” Wehrli said. “The graduation rate I’m always impressed with, how many kids we keep on track and the actual graduation is super high.”