More than half of Morgan Hill’s students met federal standards
The recent announcement that more than half of Morgan Hill’s
students met federal standards in both English and math this year
is good news. Results of the 2009 Standardized Testing and
Reporting, or STAR, show 54.4 percent of students met the English
requirement, while 56.5 met the math goal. That’s an increase over
last year of 3.6 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively, and since
2005 a 6 percent and 5.7 percent increase, respectively. Good
numbers that show an upward trend.
More than half of Morgan Hill’s students met federal standards
The recent announcement that more than half of Morgan Hill’s students met federal standards in both English and math this year is good news. Results of the 2009 Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, show 54.4 percent of students met the English requirement, while 56.5 met the math goal. That’s an increase over last year of 3.6 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively, and since 2005 a 6 percent and 5.7 percent increase, respectively. Good numbers that show an upward trend.
“Nothing gives us greater satisfaction and pride than seeing our students improve and succeed,” outgoing Superintendent Dr. Alan Nishino told reporter Natalie Everett. ‘Our students and teachers worked hard to make these impressive gains.”
Tests are used to help make decisions to improve student learning
The purpose of the STAR Program is to help measure how well students are learning required academic skills in math, English and other core subjects, but it should be noted that the results represent a very limited view of a student’s overall performance. Teachers, parents, and students use individual STAR results to help monitor each student’s academic progress. Individual student results are merged to prepare grade-level reports by subject for each school, district, county and the state. The results are used with other information about student achievement to help make decisions about ways to improve student learning.
Despite progress, more improvement needed at all levels
The bad news from those recent results is that 45.6 percent did not meet the federal standards for English and 43.5 did not meet those standards for math. This is an alarming figure that spells out the upward trend is moving much too slowly.
At this pace, it’ll take another 20 years to get three out of four students meeting those federal standards. And, the district’s, economically disadvantaged and English language learners saw even less improvement.
English language learners scored 21.3 percent in English and 35.9 percent in math, lower than district students overall by 33 percentage points and 21 percentage points, respectively.
Not to be confused with English language learners, Hispanic or Latino students scored 35 percent in English language arts and 39 percent in math, lower than district students overall by 19.4 percentage points and 17.5 percentage points, respectively.
Economically disadvantaged students scored 29.6 percent in English and 36.3 percent in math, lower than district students overall by 25 percentage points and 20 percentage points, respectively.
Now the goal is to determine what led to the improvements and build on that. That’ll be a challenge for the next superintendent.
Why do some students improve while others don’t? There are too many still not progressing and it is imperative that those students are found early and given the help needed.
