Low scores force HISD to target middle schools

Most HISD students performed about average on the Stanford Achievement Test this year, district leaders said Monday, but low reading and math scores in the middle schools are prompting officials to look more closely at the adolescent years.

“That’s our challenge for this year; middle school is our focus for this year,” said Susan Sclafani, chief of staff over educational programs. “We know that is where we’ve got to concentrate our time and effort.”

The Stanford Achievement Test, given in Houston Independent School District for the third year, compares the performance of nearly 140,500 HISD students with students who take the test nationwide. Results of the test, given last spring, were released Monday.

Sclafani said a number of factors – including difficult adolescence and students still struggling with English – cause scores to drop in middle schools, which includes grades six, seven and eight.

Overall, scores were average in most grades.

In reading, students in the first, second, third, fourth and 11th grades scored in the average range while fifth- through 10th-graders were below average.

All grades scored in the average range in math except seventh and eighth. And in language, which assesses how well students know the mechanics of writing, all grades were average except first and fourth, which scored above average.

Students in most of the grades ranked below average in science and social studies.

The nearly 22,000 students who took the Spanish version of the Stanford, called the Aprenda, outperformed their English-speaking classmates in nearly every grade. However, HISD did not count special education students when calculating the Spanish test results. Special education students are included in the English results.

“This is not Lake Woebegon,” said Sclafani, referring to humorist Garrison Keillor’s mythical community where all children are above average. “But we know our children have a great deal of talent. And the better able we are to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, the better able we will be able to take them to high levels of achievement.”

Middle school scores tend to drop for several reasons.

For one thing, educators consider it an unsettling time for students who no longer have the same teacher for every subject, but still need nurturing as they mature and start dealing with social pressures of adolescence.

Also, Sclafani said, the average scores are lowered by students who speak very limited English but have to take the test in English.

In fact, the 6,000 students who speak limited English and took the Stanford in English scored at the 12th percentile or below on the test.

In HISD’s middle schools, only recent immigrants qualify for bilingual classes. The rest take classes and tests in English even if they are not yet proficient in the language.

Sclafani said the district’s new bilingual education policy, which is designed to teach more English to students in the early grades, should do a better job preparing Spanish-speaking students for middle school.

The bilingual education policy, approved a year ago, requires schools to emphasize “the ability to read, write and speak English as rapidly as individually possible.”

Teachers who teach students in both Spanish and English are being trained to emphasize more English instruction beginning this coming school year.

Sclafani said the district also is working to get middle school teachers to teach less arithmetic and more algebra so students will be more successful in mathematics.

She said the middle schools are offering more tutoring sessions to work with students who are lagging behind academically.

And students who do poorly on the Stanford or the TAAS are required to go to summer school.

HISD students have to take the Stanford in addition to the state-mandated Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.

Students in first through eighth grades must pass the TAAS or get an acceptable score on the Stanford to be promoted to the next grade.

HISD school board approved test-driven promotion standards two years ago as a means of ending social promotion, or the practice of promoting students before they are academically ready.



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