Test scores dropped across the board, but since it’s the new test’s inaugural year, that was widely expected.
Nevertheless, Indian River School District superintendent Susan Bunting says she’s not writing off these results.
"We take data very seriously, and although this does not count as accountability for our teachers, it certainly does count as our baseline," she said.
Bunting’s downstate district saw scores in fifth grade math proficiency fall by almost 41 percentage points. High School reading scores were down more than 25 percentage points. Bunting says she and her staff are using the data to focus on students’ weak spots.
She was particularly concerned by high school performance, which dropped almost 30 percentage points in English and 46 in Math from the final DCAS assessment a year ago. She says Indian River will look at their curricula to see where it didn’t effectively serve students.
Red Clay School District superintendent Merv Daugherty also saw student test scores go down, but says his district has already started the process of strengthening student achievement.
"I think we were ahead of the game in what we were thinking about our outcomes would be to make our system better. We’ve reconfigured our schools, we’ve made some curriculum changes, and we’ve changed how we look at our professional development for our teachers," said Daugherty.
He added that - like the rest of the state - Red Clay performed better than earlier projections based on a 2014 Smarter balanced field test.
Smarter Balanced test results won’t be used to judge teacher accountability for another two years.