1 step forward, 2 back on school skills tests May 18, 2001 BY ROSALIND ROSSI EDUCATION REPORTER Chicago public elementary schools posted their sixth straight year of reading gains, but scores on two other key tests dropped for the first time in at least five years, test results showed Thursday. Overall gains on key tests were the smallest in the last five years under Mayor Daley's watch. Schools chief Paul Vallas--who has faced heat from Daley of late to improve achievement--called the results "mixed" but vowed to press on with initiatives already planned. Vallas said he was heartened by elementary reading scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, which showed that 37.8 percent of third- through eighth-graders are now reading at or above national norms--up from 36.2 percent last year. But high school reading scores on the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency slipped for the first time in five years, to 31.8 percent. Elementary Iowa math scores dropped for the first time in seven years, to 43.8 percent. The high school reading scores and elementary math scores fell solidly backward, below their levels of two years ago. Third-grade reading--Daley's new focal point--was slightly down, and the only elementary reading score to show a decrease. The drop came even though this year's third-graders were the first to have two years of summer school. The 1999 plan to require low-achieving first- and second-graders to attend summer school was a key reason for raising school property taxes to the cap. "Given all that, it's distressing that the third-grade reading scores are down, especially on a test that . . . the mayor has made his top priority," said Donald Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, a school reform group. Although the number of lowest-scoring elementary readers--those in the bottom quartile nationally--shrank overall, the percent of low scorers actually went up in four of six grades tested. That included third grade, considered key to solidifying future reading achievement and a central focus of Daley's recent reading roundtable. "That quartile is disturbing because those kids can be trapped at the bottom for the rest of their lives," said Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. "Because, as the mayor said, reading is everything." Radner linked the diminishing returns to "exhausted" teachers and a shortage that left many schools with teaching vacancies at midyear. "I would call this a crisis," Radner said. "We're going in the wrong direction, and we don't have a lot of people to take care of our kids. . . . We've got no teachers in some classrooms and exhausted teachers in others." Vallas said the unusual dip in elementary math scores--from 46.4 percent to 43.8 percent--was to be expected after steady gains since 1994. "They weren't going to increase forever," Vallas said. School Board President Gery Chico tried to be upbeat. "Elementary reading progress is paramount, and now we are seeing the sixth year in a row of elementary reading improvement," Chico said. Although two other key tests were down, Chico said, "This is a long-term turnaround. No one year defines success or failure." Schools Accountability Chief Phil Hansen noted that with each increasing grade, more students are meeting or exceeding national norms in elementary reading. "The longer kids are in school, the better they do," he said. He linked the high school reading drop to last year's change in the eighth-grade promotion policy, which for the first time counted class grades as well as test scores in deciding promotion to ninth grade. "This is kind of a bump effect of the promotion policy," Hansen said. In the new high school PLAN and Explorer tests, given for the first time last fall, far more ninth- and 10th-graders were meeting national norms than in the TAP tests, Hansen noted. For example, about 52 percent of sophomores met national reading norms on PLAN, compared with 28 percent on TAP. Alfred Hess, a research professor at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy and former Chicago Public Schools consultant, said the TAP and Iowa tests this year showed "the smallest change that we've seen since 1995." For years, they have been the system's cornerstone tests. Hess called the results "perplexing," especially in high school, where reading gains by last year's eighth-graders should have produced similar gains as this year's ninth-graders. Mayoral spokeswoman Jackie Heard said Daley remains "very realistic" about the challenge of moving the nation's third-largest school system, with 85 percent low-income kids, forward. "I'm sure that the mayor, like everyone else, would like to see better results, but he clearly understands the many challenges these students face," Heard said. "Some of the problems that students bring with them into the classroom can seem insurmountable." -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
