At first glance, Umatilla’s state report card could land the school district in the principal’s office, as students at two of its three schools scored below the state average in every category.
District officials, however, said different instruction guidelines make this year’s report inaccurate.
“The high school report card is pretty accurate, but the other two are not accurate reflections of how our students are performing,” Umatilla School Superintendent Heidi Sipe said. “Next year, when we’re all on Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in lieu of OAKS, we’ll be ready for fair comparison to other schools.”
The Oregon Department of Education released its annual “report cards” for every school district in Oregon. Redesigned this year, the cards provide a snapshot of student performance on standardized tests.
For 2012-13, the report cards used data from the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, better known as OAKS. Most districts instruct students according to OAKS standards, but in Umatilla, schools have participated in an early adoption of Common Core State Standards and the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Sipe said that difference led to low performances by Umatilla students because information is presented differently.
“The OAKS test is asking if you were to put stickers on each side of a cube, how many would you need,” she said. “On Common Core, you’re going to see two- and three-step questions with much more detail. It’s a whole different world with Common Core. I think it’s easiest to think of the comparison between the two as a boater’s driving exam and an auto driving exam. Some skills will transfer between the two and some will be completely different. The same is true with Common Core standards and the traditional Oregon standards.”
Because of the differences, Umatilla staff opted to test students with OAKS only once last year without any specialized instruction.
“The biggest reason kids aren’t doing well is we’re telling them not to stress about it – to go take the test so we can get back to instruction. We didn’t want to waste a lot of time,” Sipe said. “It’s not that we don’t think some sort of standardized testing is important – it is – but we’re really excited for the pilot of Smarter Balanced (testing) next year.”
For the 2012-13 school year, however, the ODE report cards used OAKS data, and Umatilla students in third grade through eighth grade performed lower than the state average in both recorded categories: reading and mathematics. Students scored the lowest in math testing: 71 percent of elementary students did not meet benchmarks, compared to a state average of 38 percent. At the middle-school level, 65 percent of students failed to pass the standard, compared to 38 percent state average.
Fifth- and eighth-graders were also ranked in science: 69 percent of fifth-graders did not meet expectations, and 63 percent of eighth graders also fell below the threshold. While younger Umatilla students performed poorly on the OAKS tests, Umatilla high schoolers maintained ratings consistent with the state average:
• Reading – Umatilla: 77 percent; Oregon: 85.7 percent
• Mathematics – Umatilla, 51.2 percent; Oregon: 70.1 percent
• writing – Umatilla: 41.3 percent; Oregon: 61 percent
• Science – Umatilla: 67.1 percent; Oregon: 64.2 percent
• Four-year graduation rate – Umatilla, 69 percent; Oregon: 68.4 percent
• Completion rate (includes GED and five-year graduation) – Umatilla, 81.1 percent; Oregon: 80.5 percent
Full reports for all Oregon school districts are available on the ODE website.
