AzMERIT: Poor, rural districts feel burden of new test
The first-time results highlight learning gaps in Arizona that had been there long before the new test arrived
- School officials from districts on Indian reservations frustrated by low scores
- Two-thirds of Arizona students failed to pass either math or language arts
- Interactive database (below) to check scores at your school or district
When the scores finally came in, Superintendent Catherine Steele looked to their numbers for answers.
Instead, she found disappointment and confusion in results that highlighted state learning gaps that had been there years before.
Her kids on the San Carlos Reservation had made gradual progress under the state's previous learning test, she said. They come to school every day wanting and willing to learn with an infectious eagerness.
Photos of her school district's Facebook page show proud high school graduates in orange and white gowns. Students in scrubs and lab coats learning about medicine while at a selective University of Arizona summer program. Snapshots of student success.
So why, the San Carlos Unified School District's boss asked, were their AzMERIT scores so low?
Districts with the lowest performances in the math and English language arts portion of the tests were those in rural, low-income areas and often based in Indian reservations, according to performance data by the state Department of Education. Minorities like Hispanic and Latino, Native American and African-American students as well as students with disabilities performed lower than their peers.
These districts, like Gila County's San Carlos and Pinal County's Baboquivari Unified School District, had passing percentages ranging from single digits to low 10s for both portions.
Often they have to teach students from low-income families in rural settings that make it harder to incentivize good teachers to come and stay.
Scores showed most Arizona students — about two-thirds — were not proficient in either the math or the reading learning standards.
The AzMERIT test itself was unlike what students had seen in the past. It was structured to feature more open-ended questions that challenged test takers to think critically and use problem-solving skills to find the right answers.
Many educators and experts interviewed by The Arizona Republic say the scores were a testament to the test's rigor, one with an accountability they hope will translate to stronger student achievement in Arizona once the kinks are worked out in the first year or two.
But for the time being, school districts — from the ones that performed above the state's averages to those with the lowest performances — are left navigating in a new age of AzMERIT, with many wondering what these widely varying scores truly mean for their students.
"I am just sitting here," Steele said, "wondering what are we not doing with our students."
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Low performances
The San Carlos district in Gila County and others represent Arizona's challenges to increase its percentage of college-ready students — and the long, patient processes they require.
The district, like others based on reservations, historically has had more difficulty with student achievement than the state's urban districts — though many of these schools' leaders are intent on finding ways to bridge that gap.
Some of those leaders do not believe the scores reflect those efforts.
The San Carlos district has recently implemented "positive reinforcement" learning, Steele said, as part of an effort to change the academic culture on the reservation. The district has bolstered intervention programs and experimented for four years instructing students solely through online learning — no textbooks — as a way to help better deliver their instruction to students.
The Baboquivari Unified School District in Sells, about an hour southwest of Tucson, also was one of the lowest-performing districts on AzMERIT. The district is in the middle of a years-long "transformation" process spearheaded by the district's superintendent.
That process started with overhauling the district's teacher-retention strategy to try and get good teachers to come out there. It also includes embracing data-driven instruction.
Edna Morris, superintendent of the Baboquivari district, said her schools have the highest average teacher salary in the state at $57,000. The district offers discounted housing closer to the Tohono O'Odham Reservation.
A bus equipped with Wi-Fi picks up commuting teachers from Tucson each day, and the district is participating in a professional-development program sponsored by the University of Virginia that gives specialized training to principals and teachers.
So when the scores came in, Morris, too, said she was "deeply saddened" by the results.
Eight percent of Baboquivari's students overall passed the math portion and 7 percent passed the English language arts portion, according to Department of Education data. In superintendent Steele's San Carlos district, the overall student passing rates were 6 percent in English language arts and 2 percent in math.
"We shared our data with our teachers and, of course, it was very solemn for them," Morris said. But, "sometimes when you get bad data like that it just propels you to want to work harder."
Students with disabilities were also among the lowest performers on AzMERIT, according to data. These students had a 10 percent overall passing rate in math and 6 percent in reading, data showed.
Angela Denning, the state Education Department's deputy associate superintendent for special education, said 99 percent of the state's students with disabilities took AzMERIT. Students with the most severe intellectual disabilities took a different, specialized assessment.
The Department of Education expects students with disabilities to "do as well as their non-disabled peers" on AzMERIT moving forward, Denning said.
(The following questions were pulled from the official AzMERIT testing materials website.)
The next step
Morris, like many other educators, is on board with the tougher standardized test. AzMERIT tests students on Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards, which were based on Common Core and formally adopted by the state in 2010.
The previous test, AIMS, measured learning standards that were in place before 2010. It has been described by many experts to have tested students on the bare minimum they needed to graduate.
There is variance in how school districts performed though many that performed well on AIMS generally fared above this year's state averages.
But some officials are split over the significance of this year's scores.
For one, it was the first year students took the test — there are no other results to statistically compare them with. And though the standards have been in place the past five years, teachers had about only eight weeks to prepare students for how the test was going to be formatted.
Some school officials have said they received less detailed testing data on how their students performed from the state than in past years. Educators had to survey the data they did receive later in the school year, leaving little time for implementing strategies based off the results for this school year.
It's made teachers' jobs more difficult for the second try, as scores and data from AzMERIT are intended to drive how they instruct their students, according to experts.
The scores also have little implications on how districts are formally graded by the state Department of Education at least until fall 2017, said Greg Miller, president of the state Board of Education. How districts improved or declined in state testing performance factored into their grade.
Debbi Burdick, superintendent of the Cave Creek Unified School District, described the scores as "the autopsy of the school year," a supplement to the internal benchmarks the district and most others use to gauge student progress throughout the year.
The Cave Creek district was among one of the highest overall performing districts in the state with overall passing rates of 58 percent in math and 56 percent in reading. Most of the county's best-performing district schools were in the southeast Valley and Scottsdale area.
The Paradise Valley district's Fireside Elementary School had more than 70 percent of its students pass both the math and reading portions, well above the averages. The Queen Creek district's Jack Barnes Elementary School had overall passing rates of 77 percent in reading -- among the highest for district elementary schools -- and 66 percent in math.
This year, those were in the minority.
Overall, 59 school districts in Arizona had a passing rate of 20 percent or less in reading and 50 districts had the same low scores in math, with overlap in majority of those districts. Of the 1.1 million students in state public schools, 466,000 failed at least one of the test portions, according to the state Department of Education.
Joe O'Reilly, executive director for student achievement support at Mesa Public Schools, said the teachers who were in charge of setting the test's performance levels did so with the realization that "this is where students should be and not necessarily where they are now."
It's a mindset that struggling districts will have to embrace.
Like most districts based on Indian reservations, Morris and Steele must deal with systemic challenges. In Baboquivari, there are high rates of alcoholism and emotional abuse, Morris said. Many students are being raised by their grandparents.
In San Carlos, teacher retention remains an issue as well as trying to develop English learning in students who are also taught to speak in a native language that is much more phonetically different than English.
There is resolve in both districts.
"I think that we will be back on track and I would like to see the scores increase for next year," Steele said.
Added Morris: "We know our kids can learn it."
Republic reporter Jessica Boehm contributed to this article.