Math, science proficiency fall in Cedar Rapids schools

CEDAR RAPIDS — Proficiency in math continued a four-year decline, while the rate for science saw a slight drop and that for reading remained about flat this past year on the Iowa Assessments in the Cedar Rapids Community School District.

The newly released testing data includes scores for district students in grades 3 through 11 who took the state standardized test in March. Statewide testing data from this past school year has not yet been released.

The percentages of district students who were proficient in math and science each dropped by about 2 percentage points from 2013-14 to 2014-15 — from 76 percent to 74 percent in math and from 75 percent to 73 percent in science.

In math, proficiency fell for the fourth consecutive year and was down from 77 percent in 2011-12.

Proficiency in reading stayed roughly the same, dropping slightly from 73.9 percent in 2013-14 to 73.3 percent in 2014-15.

Karla Ries, the district's director of instructional services, stressed that Iowa Assessments scores are just one data set the district uses to measure student performance. She said there isn't a single cause for the drops in proficiency.

Scores on the Iowa Assessments are used to determine each school's 'Schools in Need of Assistance' status under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The SINA designation comes with sanctions, and 20 of the district's 31 schools this past school year had some kind of SINA designation.

Ries said the district has not yet heard what its schools' statuses will be for the coming school year.

The district will implement new curriculum materials for middle-school math this year, Ries said, and it has adjusted some of its science curriculum to better align it with the Iowa Core standards for instruction.

Middle schools in the district also added a second period of language arts instruction this past year, Ries said, approximately doubling the amount of language arts instruction for students in sixth through eighth grade. She said the focus on language arts did not come at the expense of other instruction.

Reading proficiency among sixth-grade students rose 4 percent this year compared with 2013-14 and is up 9 percent since 2012-13, Ries noted. And 12 schools saw increased overall proficiency rates in reading, she said.

'We've had a really strong group of teachers working at all levels, but especially at that sixth-grade level,' she said.

But the percentages of students whose scores increased at an expected rate dropped across the board.

Expectations for scores' growth are set by the Iowa Testing Programs — which makes the Iowa Assessments — using a national group of students, Ries said.

The percentage of district students whose scores grew as expected in reading dropped 15 percentage points from 2013-14 to 2014-15, from 67 percent to 52 percent.

In math, that figure dropped 7 percentage points, from 57 percent to 50 percent. And in science, it fell 3 percentage points, from 56 to 53.

Ries said students who did not meet the expected growth level still could have increased their test scores. And 12 schools in the district saw increases in the percentage of students meeting expected growth in math, she said.

'It's always difficult in a system this size to pinpoint one particular reason for data sets looking the way they do,' Ries said.

The district in 2014-15 also implemented its teacher leadership system for the first time. That program — in which some teachers take time away from classroom instruction to coach other teachers — is funded by a state grant that is part of Gov. Terry Branstad's 2013 education reform package.

Ries said it's too early to tell if the district's teacher leadership system has improved student achievement.