A new look at test scores
The Idaho Board of Education released test scores in a whole new way Tuesday.
Instead of announcing how many students met the state’s goals on the Idaho Standards Achievement Test – or achieved proficiency – the state is reporting how well students performed compared to themselves.
About half of Idaho’s students made as much progress as they were expected to from the start of one school year to the next, or met their “individual growth targets.” Students take the test twice a year, in the spring and fall.
Superintendent Jerry Keane said he prefers the new reporting method, though the state board said Tuesday that it won’t change the way ISAT scores are reported in the spring.
Spring ISAT scores will still focus on the number of students who meet the state’s benchmark, not on the amount of growth individual students demonstrate. Spring scores will still be used to determine whether schools are meeting expectations under the federal No Child Left Behind education law, which requires 100 percent of students to perform at proficiency.
Districts are held accountable for how well students perform on the ISAT. Schools and districts can face sanctions if not enough students achieve proficiency or improve their scores on the ISAT in the spring.
“If we’re going to say let’s hold people accountable, let’s do it on the basis of individual students and their individual growth,” Keane said.
The tests are scored on a scale of 150 to 300, according to the State Board of Education. Each point represents a Rasch Unit or RIT. Every question on the computer-based test is assigned a value on the scale. Scores are calculated on the difficulty of each item and the number of questions answered correctly.
Idaho’s Board of Education established cut scores. To pass the ISAT, or be considered “proficient,” students have to meet the minimum cut score.
Scores released Tuesday show whether students are making the progress they were expected to in reading, math and language. In a press conference on Tuesday, Gary Stivers, executive director of the State Board of Education, said Idaho’s students did as well as the state was expecting.
Stivers said having half of students meet their growth targets was good. He said the number of additional students who made 75 percent or even 50 percent of their expected growth was encouraging.
He said the most exciting news was the progress among the state’s Hispanic and Latino students, American Indian students and students with limited English skills.
In some subjects, those students showed improvement at higher rates than the overall state averages.
Local school officials were still trying to make sense of the results released to the public on Tuesday – and figure out how their districts compared to the state averages. Coeur d’Alene Assistant Superintendent Hazel Bauman said the district would compare growth students made at the district’s individual schools. She said the district wants to pinpoint what makes some schools more successful or why others are struggling.
Parents will receive individualized reports on how their children performed on the ISAT and whether they met their own goals. State, district and school results are available on the State Board of Education Web site at www.boardofed.idaho.gov.