By Noah Alatza
Statewide ISTEP scores were released Oct. 3 and results showed that of the Westfield Washington Schools students in grade 10 who took the exams, only 51 percent passed both the math and English Language Arts portions.
Of students in grades 3 through 8 who took the exam, roughly 75 percent passed the math portion. When including both the English Language Arts and math portions, the number drops to 67 percent.
The lowest passing numbers in grades 3 through 8 came from Westfield Middle School. WMS saw only 60 percent of students in each grade passing both exams for grades 7 through 8.
Many school leaders said ISTEP didn’t show the full picture of student learning when last year’s batch of results was released. However, a new ILEARN test is currently being developed and is expected to be implemented to replace ISTEP sometime next year.
Westfield Washington Schools district spokeswoman Kate Snedeker said in a statement that ISTEP alone does not measure or reflect the quality of instruction taking place across the district each and every day.
“In the last several years, WWS has been engaging in intense curriculum redesign, working on alignment, employing instructional coaches to assist our teachers, introducing the best practice of workshop models for both math and language, and instituting late start Wednesdays to give our team time for professional learning,” she stated.
Snedeker said the district is looking forward to the release of the state and federal school and district letter grades for accountability in November.
“We are confident these grades will reflect well on our district’s growth in these areas,” she said.
For more, visit doe.in.gov.
