Personal attention improving Tri-Cities school scores
Kaneland McDole Elementary School in Montgomery is celebrating today as the 2014 school report cards are released.
The student body showed significant improvement, year over year, in mathematics and reading skills, as measured by the ISAT students took this past spring.
In mathematics, McDole's gained 13.2 points, attaining a growth score of 112.6. In reading, it grew 14.2 points, to 112.6.
Those are some of the largest gains of any elementary or middle school in the West Aurora, Kaneland, Batavia, Geneva, Central and St. Charles school districts. (Richmond Intermediate in St. Charles gained 15.4 points, and Lily Lake in Lily Lake gained 15.6 points, in mathematics.)
McDole has a couple of factors working against high achievement, the most notable of which is that more than one-third of its students transfer in or out every year. Also, 16 percent of its students are poor. It draws students from Montgomery, Sugar Grove and Aurora.
But "every child has the same capacity for high achievement, and we strongly believe that," McDole Principal Kelly DeGaetano said.
The scores are on a scale of 0 to 200. Scores above 100 show student improvement. The state average growth score was 102.2 this year.
The school added a mathematics coach last year. This year, it has two such coaches. It has had similar coaches for reading for several years, and this year a school social worker is also a behaviors coach.
The behaviors coach may intervene in a classroom where some children aren't respecting other students' differences, or school rules. And that, too, helps improve academics, DeGaetano said.
"If students feel safe and accepted and cared for at their school, they can more adequately focus on the task at hand," she said.
A school can have lower test scores and a good growth rate, if its students are improving. Conversely, a school can have excellent test scores and a lesser improvement rate if, for example, more students stay at the same achievement level from year to year.
At McDole, 63 percent of students in third grade met or exceeded state standards for reading, the lowest score in the district. Kaneland Blackberry Creek School was the highest, with 81 percent. But in fifth-grade reading and mathematics, Blackberry Creek was the lowest in the district, with 67 percent of students meeting or exceeding the reading standard and 74 percent doing so in mathematics.
In the Batavia school district, the growth scores for Alice Gustafson Elementary School declined 12.8 points in reading, to 97 percent. But its fifth-graders had the highest mathematics scores in the district.
And Geneva school officials will be studying why Mill Creek Elementary School's growth scores declined by 15.2 points. Patty O'Neil, the district's assistant superintendent for learning and teaching, said there were no significant changes in demographics, or additions or subtractions of certain programs, that could account for the change.
It may just be due to the change in the student body, as the 2012-13 fifth-graders exited and the 2013-14 third-graders came in, she said.
"We don't know how we would be able to pinpoint it," she said.
Not that administrators won't try in the coming months. "Building principals really like to dig in to it (the data)," she said.
They won't rely solely on the report-card data, she said. Daily performance measures and other assessments will also be used.
This is the second year schools are judged on growth rates.
In reading, the highest scores were in fifth grade at Gustafson, fourth grade at Western Avenue in Geneva, fifth grade at Shields in Sugar Grove, fourth grade at Goodwin in North Aurora, third grade at Lily Lake in Lily Lake and fourth grade at Wild Rose in St. Charles.