County’s 10th graders lose ground on standardized reading, math test scores

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, June 30, 2005 | 11:12 a.m.

The performance of Clark County 10th graders on a standardized test dipped in 2005, with their national percentile rank dropping five percentage points from the previous year in both reading and mathematics.

The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and the Iowa Tests of Educational Development were given in February to all district students in grades three through 10. Students are scored based on how their performance compares to their peers in other states, with a percentile rank of 50 representing the national average.

On the reading section of the test, Clark County School District's 10th graders had a national percentile rank of 38, down from 43 in the 2004 academic year.

In mathematics the Clark County 10th graders' rank was 40, down from 45 in 2004. Tenth graders also lost ground in the language section with a national percentile rank of 42, down three points from the 2003-04 academic year.

Agustin Orci, district deputy superintendent of instruction, said it may not be possible to know for certain why the 10th grade scores declined. One factor may be that, because of changes to the state's requirements, the district had to count scores from ninth graders who had been held back toward the 10th grade total, Orci said.

"It's a statistical anomaly we hope won't happen again," Orci said.

The State Board of Education is debating whether to continue requiring schools to count all students in their "second year" of high school as 10th graders even if they are still in ninth grade classes, said Sue Daellenbach, testing director for the Clark County School District.

"It was something they (the state education department) wanted to try and see if it worked better but it's caused a lot of headaches for schools when it comes to tracking students," Daellenbach said. "It also looks like it hurt us in terms of overall performance for the 10th grade."

Percentile ranks for the district's ninth graders were essentially unchanged; for the second consecutive year the students' reading rank was 39 and the math rank was 47. Ninth graders were ranked 43 in language, up one percentage point from the prior year.

While there was little change in scores for the majority of the district's elementary and middle school students, fifth graders gained four points in math, with a national percentile rank of 54. The district's third graders showed improvement across the board, gaining one point in reading, three points in language and two points in math.

D.J. Stutz, president of the Nevada PTA, said it's a mistake to spend too much time on standardized tests or overestimate their value.

"Right now the only way we're assessing kids is through tests, we're not looking at the whole child or the whole student," Stutz said. "There are kids out there who will study their brains out and do poorly on a test and kids who don't study at all and test brilliantly. If we're only using standardized measurements, we're sorely lacking."

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act school districts must use a different type of exam, a criterion-referenced test that measures how well students meet the state's academic standards, to determine "Adequate Yearly Progress."

Results from the statewide criterion-referenced test, given in March, will be released later this summer along with a list of campuses that failed to make AYP. Schools that do not show progress for two or more consecutive years are labeled "in need of improvement" and face sanctions.

While it isn't used to determine compliance with the law, the Iowa tests are still a valuable indicator, said Paul LaMarca, director of assessments for the Nevada Department of Education.

State education officials compare the results for Nevada students on the criterion-referenced tests, which are written specifically for them, to the Iowa tests, which are identical in content regardless of which state administers the exam.

"If we saw scores go up 10 to 20 points every year on our state test and we couldn't validate the improvement on other exams like the Iowa or NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), we would have to ask ourselves why," LaMarca said. "Having both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests is an excellent way of making sure our standards aren't out of alignment."

As for the 10th-grade slide in Clark County, LaMarca noted that one or even two years of declining scores isn't enough to indicate a trend. But educators should look at circumstances that may have affected student performance, such as the fact that the testing date was moved from the fall to the winter.

Another possible factor could be the district's aggressive push to improve student achievement on the statewide proficiency exams, particularly the passing rate for 10th graders taking the test for the first time. The proficiency exam results are used to determine AYP at the state's high schools.

If a school's primary focus is preparing for the proficiency exam, the Iowa test could end up on the back burner in the minds of students and educators, LaMarca said.

But "people ought to take all of these tests seriously, even if they don't have high stakes attached to them," La Marca said.

Daellenbach agreed.

"If a test doesn't have a grade attached to it, it doesn't have any leverage with students, particularly teenagers at that age," Daellenbach said. "They know they have to pass the proficiency test to graduate but the Iowas don't really mean anything to them."