Test scores show Sidney Schools among state’s best

The year 2012 was the first year that results of each district’s NeSA scores were completely calculated and ranked for schools to review. Sidney School District officials are happy to report that out of the 50 largest school districts in Nebraska, Sidney ranked 11th among those districts. Results in eighth grade science also ranked Sidney second in the state for that age group.

“Last year was the first year that the science results reported out and for our middle school science which is just 8th grade we are second in the state. We are very, very excited,” said Sheri Ehler, assessment director for the district and West Elementary School Principal.

This Wednesday, Juniors will begin the first test portion, the writing portion, of their final NeSA experience – they will take the last sections, reading, math and science in end of March to early May.

“In Nebraska fourth graders, eighth graders and 11th graders will all take the state writing test within that testing window,” said Ehler.

Ehler said that she believes the middle school will start testing the following week and eighth and 11th grade will take their assessments via the computer.

She said that the writing portion of the state test has been around for a while, while the reading test is in its fourth year, the math test its third year and science its second year.

“The way it all evolved in our state is writing was the first assessment. We didn’t have a state test at the time. When writing was first developed it was back when each district could develop their own assessment portfolio,” said Ehler. “So we basically had to prove that our students had the opportunity to learn the standards and material taught to those standards.”

Ehler said that she would venture to say that the writing test may still be kept separate from the other subjects because that is more difficult to administer and access.

“This is just the second year that sub-automation (online test taking) has been involved in that. An outside assessment company handles all of that scoring,” said Ehler.

Fourth graders however still do not access the test online.

She said that high school and middle school students normally get a minimum of 90 minutes per test but are allowed to work over the time limit to finish with a proctor in the classroom.

Ehler said that even though it is unfortunate that sometimes staff and students at schools can work their hearts out to score well and not have the rank show their hard work, she said she is glad that there is a new accountability system.

“This was the first year that Nebraska put out a new accountability formula. It’s called NePAS. It is Nebraska’s way of taking a lot of variables and coming out with one score.

People love to rank things first to last. There are 249 districts in Nebraska. It took third through 11th graders from districts and took all those variables and made one number,” she said. “That would have been scores on all the tests. At every grade then there is a growth score and there is an improvement score in every grade. It’s overwhelming to try and calculate.”

“In our overall score of the largest 50 districts, we were 11th. We are pretty pleased with that,” said Ehler.

The assessment director said that teachers and staff as well as students do a lot to make sure that kids are prepared for the tests every year.

“We go through a lot of processes throughout the district to make sure that what we are teaching every day does match with what the state standards are going to expect but we also go beyond that. The state standards aren’t where we stop either,” said Ehler. “We want to make sure our local curriculum encompasses all of that and more. We feel pretty confident from our NeSA scores that that is the case.”

“We are looking at our curriculum day-to-day making sure everyday that it is the best it can be for kids and that we of course are getting to all kids.”

Ehler said that one area that was not as high as the rest was reading scores. Their scores however still ranked 24th out of the 50 largest districts.

“Across the board our area that is not as high as our other scores is reading. But we are constantly looking at it and we always focus on reading because it is so important and crosses all subject areas. There is not a school district in the country that is not focusing on reading,” said Ehler.

All the subjects are scored the following ways; a student is either below standard, meets standard or exceeds standard. Writing however is scored a little differently.

Ehler said that the point of these results and rankings are for a district’s own self-reflection.

“As far as the whole state is concerned if you were to continually have a majority of students below the state average on things you would fall into a situation where you would be receiving additional support from the state. There is an accountability for each district in that manner,” she said.

Ehler stressed how much work the students and staff continue to put into doing their best each year to prepare.

“We feel good about the first time that the NePAS results have came out for Sidney,” the assessment director said. “I don’t want to say we are better than anyone else, but we are happy with the scores, particularly being it the first year for results to come out.”