Despite the Common Core’s shake-up of state education standards, students in the Baldwinsville Central School District showed generally positive state assessment results last school year.
Joseph DeBarbieri, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, presented the New York State Student Achievement Data Report for 2013-14 at the Oct. 6 Board of Education meeting.
“We are right where we need to be,” DeBarbieri said.
In math assessment grades three through eight and Common Core Algebra, Baldwinsville outscored the other 24 component school districts in the Onondaga-Madison-Cortland BOCES region, not including the Syracuse City School District. Seventh and eighth grade math results at Baldwinsville were the fifth-best in the area.
That doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement for B’ville, however. Overall, the 2013-14 scores were much lower than the previous year’s, largely due to the change in assessments brought about by the Common Core.
“There’s a significant shift. The students are being asked to think deeper,” DeBarbieri said of the new standards. “You can’t give a strategy for that.”
While 11th-graders taking the English Regents scored 6 percent better than the region, English Language Arts scores in grades seven and eight were 2 percent and 6 percent worse than the rest of the region, respectively.
“That doesn’t represent a dip in performance — it’s a recalibration [of standards],” Superintendent David Hamilton said.
Hamilton told The Messenger that a decrease in middle school testing scores is common across the board. He said assessments tend to be harder in elementary school and easier in high school, but middle school is “when they’re really pushing the kids.”
To remediate the dip in middle school scores, the district offers a technical reading and writing course at Durgee Junior High School and tracks student progress with formative diagnostic assessments. These tests show what a student has learned from week to week so a teacher can adjust his or her instruction accordingly.
“It seems like math we’ve exceeded on, and ELA has been harder to achieve,” said board member Victor Jenkins.
Hamilton explained the discrepancy between relatively high math achievement and lower ELA scores to the board.
“Math instruction tends to be a lot more responsive to change,” he said. “ELA skills take a long time.”
Board member Kim McIlroy suggested the school board reexamine the district’s goals for academic achievement in light of the changing standards.
Hamilton said in his time as superintendent, he has met with community members to find out about what Baldwinsville values academically.
“Scores are a piece of it, but not the whole picture,” he said.
