Making the Grade: West Virginia Officials Look to Future of Education

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West Virginia
Schooling Affiliation President Dale Lee, proper, says Nationwide Evaluation of Instructional Progress scores don’t inform the entire story.

CHARLESTON – It’s no secret that academic attainment for West Virginia college students within the areas of math and studying was low even earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic drove these scores decrease, however schooling leaders within the state need to reverse the pattern.

Earlier this week, the Nationwide Evaluation of Instructional Progress (NAEP) launched its 2022 Report Card exhibiting a nationwide lower in English Language Arts (ELA) and math scores for college kids in fourth and eighth grades – the most important drop since NAEP first issued assessments in 1990.

NAEP assessments report out math and ELA outcomes primarily based on common scores starting from zero to 500. In West Virginia, fourth graders through the 2021-2022 college yr scored 226 in math, six factors under 2019 scores. Eighth graders scored 260 in math, 12 factors under 2019 scores. In studying, fourth graders scored 205, eight factors under 2019 scores, whereas eighth graders scored 249, six factors under 2019 scores.

Talking Thursday, West Virginia Schooling Affiliation President Dale Lee stated he and his fellow educators perceive how the NAEP scores look, however they don’t inform the complete story they usually don’t present particular information for lecturers to know what areas inside math and studying want probably the most consideration.

“It’s a random choice of college students; 14% of our fourth graders, 13% of our eighth graders took the take a look at,” Lee stated. “You don’t know the place they have been, who they’re, what faculties, or anything, so you’ll be able to’t get the info to say right here’s the world that we have to enhance on. Right here’s the counting that we have to enhance on, or one thing.”

The NAEP scores confirmed what West Virginia’s personal summative assessments confirmed in September – college students within the state took a giant hit in studying through the COVID-19 pandemic, including to already below-average take a look at scores. Members of the West Virginia Board of Schooling acquired a sneak peek on the scores through the summer time.

“These scores should not shocking to me. I totally anticipated they’d be that manner,” stated state Board of Schooling President Paul Hardesty by telephone earlier this week. It was Hardesty’s first assembly as the brand new board president when the board acquired the preliminary information.

Since then, Hardesty has been vocal in regards to the want for the state Division of Schooling below new State Superintendent of Faculties David Roach and county schooling officers to redouble their efforts on specializing in studying and math fundamentals.

“I’ve directed Superintendent Roach and we’ve directed the division that we’re going to concentrate on going again to the fundamentals, being math, studying, and writing,” Hardesty stated. “Now we have to do this going ahead. Now we have to get these core, primary lessons practical, so to talk, to the place we will transfer ahead. We’ve bought to return and concentrate on the fundamentals.”

The Balanced Scorecard appears at a number of components, together with take a look at scores from the annual statewide evaluation in grades three, eight, and 11. It first debuted for the 2017-2018 college yr, after Gov. Jim Justice known as for the top of a earlier system that graded faculties on an A-F scale.

The Balanced Scorecard for the 2021-2022 college yr final yr confirmed that 53.9% of West Virginia college students have been proficient in ELA, a three-point enchancment from the 2020-2021 college yr as faculties have been coping with shutdowns and distant studying as a result of unfold of COVID-19. Nevertheless it was three factors under the 2018-2019 college yr, when 56.9% of scholars have been proficient in ELA.

Solely 48.8% of scholars examined have been proficient in math through the 2021-22 college yr, almost 5 factors up from 44% through the 2021 college yr, however down almost 5 factors from 53.5% through the 2019 college yr. No statewide summative evaluation was supplied through the 2019-2020 college yr after faculties have been shut down when the pandemic first hit the state in March 2020.

Lee stated it’s straightforward in charge the pandemic for the loss in studying, however different components proceed to have an effect on how college students carry out even previous to the pandemic, such because the variety of college students from low-income households, college students being raised by different relations or foster households as a result of state’s opioid disaster.

“Now we have larger share of poverty and a better share of scholars who don’t dwell with their organic mother and father being raised by grandparents or neighbors, uncles or aunts, then we’ve got a better quantity which can be examined, which have an effect on scores,” Lee stated.

State Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, is the brand new chairwoman of the Senate Schooling Committee and a public college trainer for greater than 15 years. Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, gave Grady the cost of working with schooling officers on methods to enhance academic attainment in public faculties. Talking by telephone Thursday, Grady stated she was already collaborating with Roach on a brand new literacy program earlier than the NAEP scores have been launched.

“The 2 of us share a ardour for desirous to make it possible for our college methods are profitable and make it possible for our college students are profitable,” Grady stated. “We had been some literacy initiatives and literacy packages that different states have applied … so we’re modeling some literacy laws for particularly specializing in kindergarten by third grade primarily based on the fashions from different states which have proven success.”

Lee stated he wish to see the return of the innovation zone program, which allowed faculties and lecturers extra flexibility from state board insurance policies to implement new packages. Funding for this system ceased and the Legislature turned its focus to the state’s public constitution college pilot program and the Hope Scholarship academic financial savings account program.

“Innovation zones was the place lecturers bought collectively and got here up with concepts to enhance their college and to strive new issues and to ask for waivers from the voluminous variety of insurance policies that we’ve got,” Lee stated. “In every of these, you noticed take a look at scores enhance, however the Legislature stopped funding it so we will fund constitution faculties and Hope Scholarships and all the pieces else.”

Grady stated one of many issues she sees within the classroom is that college students typically don’t have the help at dwelling, with mother and father and guardians maintaining college and residential life separate as an alternative of continuous the educational at dwelling.

“As a trainer, one of many issues that I’ve seen increasingly over the course of my 15 years within the classroom is the worth of schooling from a household perspective, as in like a guardian perspective,” Grady stated. “It’s extra of an perspective of, properly, that’s your schoolwork and we’re at dwelling now.

“I believe it’s a mixture of everyone being overwhelmed,” Grady continued. “You might have extra mother and father working lengthy hours now. You might have operating from place to position and exercise to exercise, and there’s perhaps not as a lot time to sit down down and, um, really work on issues that, which can be serving to or enriching the children.”

Lee stated lecturers want extra freedom and fewer burdens that restrict their time working straight with college students, and faculties want extra freedom to concentrate on the wants of scholars of their communities.

“If you wish to make a distinction, we’ve got to ask the consultants — the educators — and it may well’t be a one-size-fits-all top-down sort of state of affairs,” Lee stated. “It needs to be every college determining what they want, what they should do, how one can finest attain their children and transfer ahead that manner.”

It additionally would possibly take a tradition shock to wake mother and father and guardians to the issues their kids are having in faculties. Home Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, sponsored a invoice final yr that will have required college students be held again in they didn’t attain math and ELA proficiency charges by the top of third grade. Grady and Lee didn’t agree with the laws itself, however they did agree with the purpose.

“I believe the intent was nice, however I wouldn’t have supported that invoice simply the best way it was written,” Grady stated. “Nevertheless, this literacy invoice that the State Superintendent and I’ve been engaged on collectively incorporates that to an extent. It’s particular in regards to the interventions that happen in every grade degree and the way typically that has to occur when a baby exhibits they’re not proficient.”

“Now we have to vary the tradition in a lot of our lecture rooms, a lot of our faculties, and most of the children,” Lee stated. “They should study to worth schooling. It has to make a distinction for him. Nearly everybody may inform you of a trainer that modified their lives indirectly. Now we have to return to giving the liberty to the lecturers to have the ability to tackle the necessity of every scholar and determine how one can make that change for them.”