Results on the 2008 Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) in Brookfield-Lyons School District 103 were mixed, with the district’s composite score falling slightly compared to 2007.
Overall, 77.4 percent of the district’s students met state standards in reading and math on the ISAT, which is used to measure progress for meeting goals of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
District 103’s overall score was lower than the state’s mark of 79.1 percent of students meeting state standards. Last year, the district was on even-par with the state at 78.7 percent.
“As a district superintendent, I always want to see scores improving,” said District 103 Superintendent Michael Warner. “We are always working on ways of improving scores.”
The district was also judged as not making adequate yearly progress under guidelines set by No Child Left Behind, despite the fact the every school individually was judged to have made such progress.
Taken as a whole, the district, which serves the southeast quarter of Brookfield, did not meet state standards in reading with respect to students with limited English proficiency and students with disabilities. The district needed 48.2 percent of those students to meet state standards on the exam. Just 42.4 percent of students with limited English proficiency and 42.5 percent of special education students met those standards.
In 2008, schools were made to conform to new rules regarding testing for students whose first language is not English. Prior to 2008, in Illinois those with limited English skills took an alternate exam. This year, they had to take the ISAT test.
“We think it was a disadvantage to our students, because we had students who were not very proficient in English at all taking the same test as native-born English speakers,” Warner said.
When students take the exam in 2009, it’s not likely to change, according to Warner. Not until 2010 will there be a Spanish-language version of the ISAT.
Meanwhile, District 103 saw scores in fourth grade fall in reading, math and science by 12.4, 10.1 and 15.9 percent respectively. Those were offset by better scores in both fifth and sixth grades in both reading and math.
In fifth grade throughout District 103, the percentage of students meeting state standards in reading jumped 14.8 percent. In sixth grade, reading scores increased by 15.8 percent.
At Lincoln School, 80.8 percent of students met state standards in reading and math on the ISAT, with losses in fourth grade offset by significant jumps in fifth grade. In fifth-grade reading, for example, Lincoln School saw a 44-percent increase in the number of students meeting state standards, and a 23.6-percent jump in math.
George Washington Middle School saw a strong improvement in sixth-grade reading, with 75.3 percent of student meeting state standards. That’s a 15.8 percent increase over the previous year.
Seventh- and eighth-grade scores in reading and math at Washington Middle School fell slightly or kept pace with 2007.
The school also experienced a spike in chronic truancy in 2008. According to information included in the school’s state report card, Washington School experienced a chronic truancy rate of 11.3 percent in 2008.
Since 2001, the school’s chronic truancy rate has never been above 1.4 percent and is below a half-percent most years. Warner said he believes there may have been a mistake concerning that number, however, saying, “I’d be very surprised if that’s accurate.”
Demographically, District 103 continued to gain Hispanic students. In 2008, the student body in District 103 was 58 percent Hispanic. That’s an increase of two percent from 2007. In 2002, Hispanics made up 22 percent of the district’s student body.