Results from Hollister High School’s two annual tests showed 11th graders are not meeting grade-level standards in English language arts, mathematics or English language proficiency. The school scored “low” on all subjects.
The 2022 Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment and English Language Proficiency Assessments for California, are given to students in grades 3 through 8 and 11. Director of Academics and Instructional Programs Elaine Klauer told BenitoLink the state data does not reflect the actual results of students who took the assessments, and that strategies are in place to improve scores for the current school year.
San Benito High School District will be eligible for differentiated assistance based on information in the 2022 California School Dashboard.
According to the California Department of Education, the Every Student Succeeds Act “requires districts and schools to test at least 95% of all students and student groups in English language arts and mathematics. It also requires states to factor the participation rate into the Academic Indicator. If a district, school, or student group does not meet the 95% participation rate target, the Distance from Standard value for the Academic Indicator is adjusted downward.”
Klauer told BenitoLink that the participation requirement has led to misleading results, suggesting that students performed poorly on the English Language Proficiency and English language arts levels. She said that wasn’t the case for students who took the test.
“We had progress on 57.1% for our English Learners,” Klauer said. “We would have actually been above the state [average] in English, but we didn’t hit the medium bar because we were 1% away from our participation rate.”
According to the School Dashboard Additional Reports and Data at the Department of Education website, 412 English learners were tested out of the 442 registered in the 11th grade class, bringing the participation rate to 93.2%.
The School Dashboard shows 756 out of 814 11th grade students took the English language arts assessment. Though the cohort scored 8.6 points below average, the participation rate was 93%.
“If we would have hit our participation rate in English, we would have been in medium,” Klauer said. “In math we still would have been in low, but we are at par with the state in both areas.”
The participation rate for the math assessment was 94%, with only 770 out of 822 11th graders taking the test. The cohort scored 92.3 points below the state average in math.
In preparation for the 2023 Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments, which begin March 1, teachers are conducting small group intervention instruction with struggling students during Hay Baler Support Time, Klauer said.
“We will be doing that over the next six weeks before the math assessment starts,” she said. “The goal is that we’re meeting in small groups with students, specifically our English learners and students with disabilities. Of course all students, but we’re really targeting those two student groups.”
Because the proficiency rate was “very low” in those two student groups, Klauer said teachers are intervening with “boot camps” until March.
“Part of that is to do some devoted assessing to get them in front of questions in math and English that look like the assessment,” she said. “They can kind of strategize what’s difficult for them, how they might pick apart a question and answer it.”
Klauer also said teachers will prepare students by focusing on the necessary skills and tools needed for the math assessments.
“Like highlighting, being able to open the screen, making the font larger,” she said. “Just things that we wouldn’t think about; that we may not typically use. The calculator within the math assessment is run by a program called Desmos, and if you’re not quite sure how to use that to like put a fraction in, you may end up getting the wrong answer.”
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