Fewer than half of East Aurora elementary and middle school students on track in reading and math, data shows

Fewer than half of East Aurora School District 131 elementary and middle school students are on track for the start of the school year in reading and math, preliminary testing data from the district shows.

In response, district leadership says East Aurora is taking steps like offering professional development to staff and administrators and looking at revisions to its curriculum.

The data was presented at a meeting of the East Aurora school board’s curriculum committee in late September. The numbers were as of mid-September, when some students were still taking make-up tests, according to Ami Engel, the district’s associate superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment.

The results show that a little less than half of District 131 students in first through eighth grade are “on track” for the start of the year.

Being on track, Engel explained, essentially means that a student is performing at their current grade level in terms of skills, or one grade level behind. The latter is because students are being tested at the start of the school year, she noted, so they wouldn’t be expected to know all of the content for that grade level already.

As of mid-September, 49% of first- through eighth-grade students were on track in math according to Engel’s presentation, while 41% were on track for reading English.

And 48% of first- through fifth-graders were on track for reading Spanish, the presentation indicated. The district didn’t test middle school students on reading Spanish, according to Engel.

“This just tells us that, across the district, over half of our students are entering that school year needing more than just exposure to grade-level instruction,” Engel said. “We have work to do so that we can get these students where they need to go.”

The results come from the district’s fall benchmark testing with i-Ready, a kindergarten through 12th grade assessment used at East Aurora.

For the students that are not on track, Engel said, the district needs to “accelerate their learning in both grade-level standards and in areas where they have those gaps.”

Engel’s presentation showed 27% of first- through eighth-grade students in the district were three or more grade levels below where they are supposed to be when it comes to math, compared to 34% of students for reading English.

The data collected by the district seems to reveal that the proportion of students who are on track in these areas slides over the course of elementary and middle school.

“For those middle grades in particular, we need to be asking, ‘What are those high-leverage skills our students are missing?’” Engel said.

Acknowledging that the current situation “isn’t acceptable,” Superintendent Bob Halverson said that having “open conversations about the data” was not happening in the district before he took over, and that doing so is a focus of his.

“We just have to make sure that we’re doing that each and every day, and being realistic about where we’re at,” Halverson said.

But it won’t be a quick fix, he added.

“When you have a gap that wide, when you have some students who may be operating at the 90th percentile and some who may be operating at the third percentile … you know as an educator, it’s unfair to ask you to close that gap in a year,” Halverson said. “So it is going to take multiple years.”

“I don’t think it’s a simplistic answer. But it starts with acknowledging that we’re not happy with where we’re at.”

mmorrow@chicagotribune.com