St. Charles D303 may dump state tests to measure success

St. Charles Unit District 303 may re-evaluate its measures of student achievement after an eye-opening statistic from Elgin Community College and state test scores not quite as stellar as last year’s.

School board members on a committee tasked with reviewing test performance numbers learned that about half the students who attend ECC upon graduation find themselves placed in remedial math, reading and English classes. The district sends up to 200 kids a year to ECC.

Numbers also show a second year of decline in the number of District 300 juniors testing at a proficient level in reading. A two-year dip in District 303 is a rare phenomenon. The district consistently scores better than the state average by double-digits in most test results each year. That trend continued even with the dip.

Mark Pomplun, the district’s director of student assessments, said staff members are meeting with high school teachers to discuss increasing the difficulty in reading and other course work.

A more detailed analysis shows students in advanced placement courses and those getting A’s in standard course work show college proficiency in the testing. But students just one notch below, receiving B’s in class, aren’t hitting that proficiency mark.

Pomplun said that may indicate teachers are handing out B’s that aren’t deserved.

“If they’re not college-ready, then there’s a question about rigor there,” Pomplun said.

Those facts combine with stagnant numbers in ISAT scores at the elementary school level to create a question about changing the focus of student achievement away from state test scores.

“We need to discuss what are the benchmarks by which we as a community want to measure ourselves,” Superintendent Don Schlomann said. “I don’t believe the ISAT benchmark is a real good benchmark. I believe we should use college readiness as the standard.”

Such a change might represent a tough image for St. Charles to wear, Schlomann said. District 303 assessments typically reveal only about 55 to 60 percent of its students are college-ready or are on the track for college readiness. While that sounds bad, staff members said Chicago schools recently took a look at college readiness as a benchmark and found less than 20 percent of its students are college-ready.

School board members will discuss changing student assessment at a meeting next month.