PSS foresees growth in SAT9 results

Education Commissioner Rita H. Inos has expressed optimism that students will gain higher scores in this year’s Stanford Achievement Test — 9th Edition, an assessment that selected grade levels in the Public School System took before the end of the school year.

Dr. Inos said she is hopeful that SAT9, to be released in the succeeding summer months, will show some trends in growth as PSS did all it can during the previous academic year to strengthen areas which needed utmost attention.

Specific areas for improvement were determined as a result of last year’s evaluation.

“There are areas of concern for us and as we have seen in our previous SAT9 scores — those are what we are continually addressing,” said Dr. Inos.

She cited Mathematics as a subject area which PSS should further develop.

Unlike the previous year, only certain grade levels where required to take SAT9 this year, a method targeted to effectively track the improvement of students across all grade levels.

“Last year was a very important year for me. PSS tested all grade levels to establish benchmarks at every grade level,” said Dr. Inos.

The established benchmarks would serve as a point of comparison for other evaluations to be administered on the same grade levels in succeeding years. This method is otherwise referred to as the Cohort Analysis.

“This year. we only tested various grades. The following year, we’re going to be testing the alternate grade so that every year, we can track the cohort. This is so we can find out how did the first grade do this year versus the next year,” she added.

Latest SAT9 results reveal positive outcomes particularly in the kindergarten level, according to Dr. Inos.

Kindergarten students, as records show, are performing at or above the 15 percentile as compared to the rest of the nation.

“Now we just need to see that our first graders are also incrementally improving with these expectations,” she said.
With this in mind, Dr. Inos has disclosed PSS’ plans to further build means of support to enhance student learning.

Conducting yearly assessments is all under PSS’ systemic standards-based reform which has been applied by the whole system in the past five years.

During the first year of the reform, educators and members of the school community reached consensus on what students should know and be able to do in English Language Arts.

Once completed, the new English Language Arts Content and Performance Standards went to content specialists who created the scope and sequence in English Language Arts.

The last step in the process was to develop classroom assessments that measure the standards and benchmarks and an accountability plan that measures student learning accurately, enabling teachers, principals, and PSS to be successful in creating environments where all student meet or exceed standards.

The impact of these reforms to PSS has resulted in active involvement among community members.

Further, it also paved the way for an 1.45 average increase in the total SAT9 Reading achievement from 1997/98 to 1998/99.

It also worthwhile to note that Oleai Elementary School, an intensive standards-based site, SAT9 Reading achievement scores jumped an average of 6 NCE from 1997/98 to 1998/99. (MM)