Hermiston School District student test results showed improvement in several key areas, according to results announced earlier today.
The Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS) test is administered annually in the areas of mathematics, reading, writing and science. The OAKS test is administered for grades 3 through 11 in both reading and mathematics, grade 11 in writing and grades 5, 8 and 11 in science.
“Hermiston continues to outperform comparison school districts and schools by 15-25 percent,” said Assistant Superintendent Bryn Browning in a message to teachers this morning. “I want to commend you for your outstanding student performance last year. Although we all know that our success is measured by more than just student performance on standardized tests, the official data released this morning from ODE is truly something to celebrate.”
At the elementary level, Sunset Elementary (3.1 percent math growth), Rocky Heights Elementary (5.2 percent reading growth), and West Park Elementary (5.3 percent reading growth) showed the most growth. Celebrations at the secondary level are at Sandstone Middle School registered a 4.4 percent math growth and the high school school students had 8.2 percent reading growth and 5 percent math growth.
“Our high school students once again outperformed the state average and showed improvement in all academic areas, which has been a trend for the past several years,” Browning said.
Browning said the district is continuing to focus its efforts for increasing the achievement for all students by allocating time and resources on implementing best teaching strategies, such as increasing student engagement and providing appropriate support and intervention skills times in reading and mathematics on a frequent basis. Hermiston is also focusing resources on implementing the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which reinforce literacy across the content areas and demonstration of higher level thinking skills in mathematics.
“This year we continue our collaboration amongst teachers, to share best teaching practices and analyze student achievement data, by increasing the amount of collaboration time each week through our new late-start and early-release Wednesday schedule,” she said.
Browning said she echoes the thoughts of the Oregon Department of Education in the “hope that people will look beyond the percentage to the learning behind it. Test results and percent met should never be our end goal. That end goal needs to be student learning.”
She said student learning, as reflected by average scores, generally held steady this last year.
“With our federal flexibility waiver, we moved away from the punitive system that incentivized over-testing and an instructional focus on the students who were closest to meeting standard,” Browning said. “We are now testing kids less and focusing instead on student learning and growth. We believe these changes are in the best interest of kids, but they have impacted the way we have long measured educational success in our state. We hope this year’s results will spark deeper conversations about how to best gauge student learning and growth and how to fairly and accurately assess the success of our educational system.”
