Middlesex County Field Observation

Increasing student achievement is one of the goals at Lewisville High School. There are two major exams used to measure student achievement. The first exam is the South Carolina High School HSAP exam. The second exam is the End-of Course Exam. South Carolina requires students to complete End-of-Course exams at the completion of English 1, Physical Science, U.S. History, and Algebra 1.

The American College Testing (ACT), 2010 concluded that a large number of high school students and high school graduates do not possess the knowledge and skills for college level work or career training. With the creation and implementation of common core standards, states and school districts have a clear set of student expectations to target

Louisiana Department of Education states, “The Common Core State Standards are fundamental descriptions of reading, writing, and math skills that focus on the ability to think independently.” (LDOE) Common Core State Standards hold students across the country to the same high bar and allow Louisiana students to see how they perform compared to students across America. “State school chiefs and governors recognized the value of consistent, real-world learning goals and launched this effort to ensure all students, regardless of where they live, are graduating high school prepared for college, career, and life.” (Corestandard.org) Prior to adopting these standards, Louisiana students were learning material that was sometimes even a full year behind several high-performing states. The Common Core State Standard asks students to engage in independent thinking skills such as comparing and contrasting and analyzing characters. Nearing the end of the school year, “Students are tested annually English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies in 3rd through 8th grades. The assessments measure whether each student has gained the knowledge and skills in the subject for their grade.” Students learning will be measured by the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). Students in grades 3rd through 8th grades will be assessed on the full range of the Common Core State Standards to ensure they are “on track” or “ready” for college and

Student achievement is one of the driving factors in education and, quite possibly, the most important. Educators strive to help students improve achievement through quality instructional practices and safe and effective learning environments, but this does not always correlate to adequate performance on standardized testing used to evaluate college or career readiness. One of the measures utilized to evaluate student achievement is the ACT test. Historically, the ACT has provided a measure of college readiness and one that became very serious for Kentucky schools as it is now part of the state accountability

The test is administered in the spring and the results provide students, teachers, and parents with an objective view of the student’s strengths and weaknesses. The listening and speaking scores are combined to obtain an overall scale score, as are the reading and writing scores. The overall performance is determined by the scores in each combined area. A conversion chart is provided in each grade band, to convert the raw score to a scale score. Then depending on where the scale scores land will give you the placement level that the student is at. To move from one level to another both component scores must land in the upper level range. A student, who advances in only one

Although standardized tests do not accurately represent a student’s performance and future, they do present the opportunity to test an individual’s general knowledge. The tests also give students the chance to test their test-taking efficiency and time management, whether or not the individual is under tremendous amounts of stress. With these assessments, students can rank their performance and improve for future tests.

Recently, 99% of graduates have pursued secondary education. 87% attend four-year colleges and 12% attend two-year colleges. Students are given the opportunity to take advanced placement course work and exams. The AP participation rate is 72%. The participant passing rate is 77%. Most test takers have about 4.5 exams with a pass rate of 67%. According to US news, their 2015 academic indicators were college readiness index at 59.3, mathematics proficiency at 85%, English proficiency 94% and a student-teacher ratio of 9:1. Percentages of students not meeting learning standards are very low with 1% in English and 8% in mathematics. These values are based on student performances on state exit exams and internationally available exams on college-level work. At Hewlett, students take AP and IB exams to earn college credit and demonstrate successful college-level course work. Hewlett offers students twenty-one college courses through colleges. I only took Regents courses, but did take college level electives in my senior year, which allowed me to graduate with nine accredited college credits from Syracuse University. Below is an overview of the programs offered.

Also the state assessment is built around the TEKS. The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) is the state’s annual assessment and test reading, science, writing and social studies. The STAAR test is a criterion-referenced test. The STAAR test does not cover all of the subjects or grade levels of the TEKS standards that are set in Texas. Grades 3-8 are tested in reading, math, writing, social studies and science. The state has also adopted end of course assessments for high school students in English I, English II, Algebra I, Biology, and U.S. History. Once testing is completed data is collected by the TEA, and posted on its website. Assessment results are disaggregated by student backgrounds, district and

The College Board and ACT nonprofit organizations, known for developing and administering the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) assessment respectively, represents higher education’s widely accepted college readiness determinant for prospective students. These examinations empirically measure a student’s grasp of reading, writing, and mathematics – subjects taught every day in high school classrooms. As a result, they typically constitute a significant proportion of the total entrance requirements for prospective students to relevant institutions of higher learning and denote a serious endeavor unto itself. Students commonly take one or both of these examinations during their junior or senior year of high school as dictated by an institution’s administrative guidelines, although most colleges now allow either test as part of their proprietary admission formulas. And since it turns out there exists subtle differences in the tests themselves, students should review research concluding certain individuals may be better candidates for maximizing performance on one examination versus another.

The academic performance at Central Falls High School (CFHS) has historically trailed behind the average school performance numbers for the state of Rhode Island. According to the article, 271 freshmen entered Central Falls High School in 2005, but only 47 percent reached graduation four years later. Other data revealed that other 33.5 percent of the students dropped out, 12.5 percent were held back, and 7 percent received a General Equivalency Diploma. Data also revealed that only 55 percent of the student body was considered to be proficient in reading and only 7 percent proficient in math. These statistics showed little improvement by 2008, where the math proficiency rose another 3 percent (Donnelly & Rochefort, 2011).

To remediate this, we contracted with the Achievement Network to help us connect the standards to a curriculum and plan for a more fluid instructional delivery that would improve the assessment outcomes. They provided us a structure that laid out the Common Core Standards of assessed skills that included a scripted curriculum and instructional activities outlined in their guidelines. Students are making growth towards attainment. However, only 9% of the student population have met grade-level proficiency targets. Teachers are feeling that they are harshly judged because 30% of their evaluation is based on students meeting proficiency.

Originally the Standard Based Assessment exam was used from 2012 to 2014 in order to evaluate the students’ proficiency on content-based material ( ). Just last year a new testing method, the Alaska Measures of Progress testing in the areas of mathematics, reading, and writing was adopted ( ). The shift from the Standard Base Assessment to the Alaska Measure of Progress was the Department of Education desire to have students prepared for secondary education or work placement expectations set for in the statement. The Alaska Measure of Progress exam are drastically different in questioning, scoring, achievement definitions, and score parameters then the preceding testing assessment ( ) This lack of comparison leaves the educators in a glitch as they try to educate their students in content-based material without having reliable proficiency testing results. As of this writing the educator will only have the snapshot of last year’s results to direct, guide, and implement their teaching strategies to facilitate the learning process in the classroom. However these test results scores are presently being debated in open forum to the public to set cutoff scores for the four categories in which the student will show proficiency ( ) . So without adequate guidance the teacher is hampered in their efforts to educate a diverse

Standardized tests can be found at any level of a student’s academic career, but are they accurate indicators of a student’s academic abilities? Standardized tests are used to measure a student 's academic abilities, and overall knowledge. In theory, a student 's skills can be determined by examining the limited data collected from the test. However, standardized test do not fully represent a student 's abilities, and cumulative knowledge. Many factors may affect the validity of the scores, and the accuracy of the assessment. Instructor’s teaching directly for the test, being able to guess on multiple choice questions, examining only test scores, and ignoring other academic factors contribute to the biased representation of students’ academic abilities.

Instead two grades occupy each. First is McFall that hosts the littlest of the children. The community basketball courts are adjacent to their ever-expanding playground. Houses dot the street as you continue down, some in disrepair and others still with scaffolding. A church is the first thing you see, but just behind it sits the next step in your elementary journey. The entrance is hidden in the form of a development entrance. More houses block the view of the next buildings, but soon you reach an intersection. Before you stand the high school, but down the side road hides the last elementary building, Page Elementary. The middle school can be seen in the distance. Tucked away behind the baseball diamond and various tennis courts. The height of the building contrasting harshly with the

et al (2011) looked for strategies for connecting large-scale achievement tests administered in middle and high school students with a college entrance exam. The researchers perceived the significance of investigating the probability of mapping high school achievement to current college readiness benchmarks (CRBs). The study employed the American College Testing (ACT) college readiness assessment, which has CRBs for its four content area tests: English, Math, Reading, and Science ACT scores (ACT, 2010a). As an exploratory study, it endeavored to make utilization of two unique strategies used to a determined sample of students with both ACT and Iowa scores. The next procedure was devoted to evaluating the resulting classification rates across the four content area tests, English, Math, Reading, and Science. This study is unique, that it extensively explored several measurable strategies to predict performance on content area college admissions tests lifted from Grade 11 achievement test scores, however, it then figures on the vertical scale of the achievement test to comparable projections utilizing scores from Grades 8 to