CPS working to close student achievement gap

The Columbia School Board discussed the district’s results from the reading and math benchmark tests during its meeting Monday night.

The STAR assessment test is given to CPS students in grades 1-8 three times a year during the fall, winter and spring. The test is taken online and is used by teachers and administrators to monitor progress for individual students throughout the school year.

“It’s really about the support team,” Michelle Baumstark, Community Relations Director said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “Working with the individual students, that is what’s making a difference.”

For the past two years, CPS STAR test scores have showed a positive correlation with students’ scores on the year-end Missouri Assessment Program test, or MAP.

“If we only give that once a year then we don’t have an idea of how kids are doing throughout the year,” said Superintendent Peter Stiepleman. “Then we won’t have very good information about whether or not we’re making good process.”

The elementary grade levels saw significant score improvements during the 2014-2015 school year. Whereas scores in the middle school level improved only slightly or even decreased.

The number of students in grades 6-8 that scored proficient in math dropped by 0.8 percent. Reading proficiency scores increased by 1.2 percent.

Whereas elementary reading proficiency scores improved by 9 percent during the 2014-2015 school year.

“What we’re seeing in middle school is making us question what we need to do differently,” Stiepleman said. “So that gives us the opportunity to say to our board and our community that the DST process is going to help yield a different result than what you’ve seen.”

The District Support Team, or DST, is made up of the district’s central office, a district principal and school coordinators. It was formed last year to analyze data from the STAR test and find what strategies best help improve results for each individual student.

“It’s less about what the data actually says and more about what do we do to meet the needs of children,” Stiepleman said.

However, school officials said the achievement gap between students a part of the free and reduced lunch program and students that are not has remained steady over the past few years.

For third graders scoring proficient in reading, the gap has stayed around 24 percent since 2012. Students scoring at the proficient level in grades 6-8 have an achievement gap average of about 31 percent in reading and 30 percent in math.

Two CPS middle school teachers spoke at Monday night’s board meeting saying the district’s decision to eliminate an extra 45 minute reading class at the middle school level may be contributing to the drop in test scores.

School officials said more research will be necessary to determine if that is the case.

Stiepleman said the district will move money for tutoring to a mandatory summer program for students who may be struggling.

“We believe this process will help eliminate some of those gaps by reducing what is called ‘summer learning loss,’ he said. “Because some kids don’t read over the summer, they don’t have direct instruction and they don’t have the opportunity to learn.”