Two schools ‘partially meeting expectations’

Both Newcastle Elementary School and Newcastle High School are preparing improvement plans to submit to the state after the schools were designated as “partially meeting expectations”  by the Wyoming Department of Education. 
“School performance is evaluated on a combination of student performance indicators, including academic achievement, equity and growth based on the Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress (WY-TOPP), the state assessment,” a Sept.  14 press release says. “Additional indicators for high school include post-secondary readiness and graduation rates.” 
According to the release, 38 of Wyoming’s schools, or 13% are exceeding expectations, 106 schools or 36% are meeting expectations, 85 schools or 29% are partially meeting expectations and 63 schools or 22% are not meeting expectations for the 2021-22 school year. 
With WY-TOPP scores playing a role in school rankings, the Weston County School District No. 1 board of trustees discussed local test scores on Oct. 12. Not only did the board members discuss the overall school rankings, they also discussed the less than satisfactory performance of several grades on the statewide test.
 
More than meets the eye 
Despite low student scores in various areas, Superintendent Brad LaCroix and district trustees and school administrators suggest people need to look at the whole picture and not just the test scores when it comes to education and student success. 
School administrators agree, and are adamant that there is more to look at than WY-TOPP scores when gauging student success. They also point out that there are several reasons students may perform poorly on a test. 
“There are so many factors that come into it,” said Brandy Holmes, Newcastle Elementary School principal. 
Outside factors that may impact students’ performance, according to school administrators at the Oct. 12 meeting, include everything from test anxiety to lack of motivation. It was noted that the pandemic may have had an impact on the scores. 
Newcastle Middle School Principal Tyler Bartlett added that lots of things impact the scores. He specifically mentioned that the science tests are not required every year and that
some grade levels are required to complete a writing component while others are not. 
“These (scores) are not reflective of what is going on. We are asking the same questions. Regardless, we are doing the improvement plan, sitting down and looking at kiddos and how they did,” Holmes said. “We are looking at the individual and the system. We are not putting all our eggs in one basket. But, this is the basket that is out there and reflects publicly what is out there.”
Digging into the data
Holmes reported to the News Letter Journal that the district is ranked on four performance levels, in addition to the participation rate set by the Wyoming Accountability in Education Act — achievement, English learning progress, growth and equity. Newcastle High School principal Bryce Hoffman said that the equity group is made up of students who scored in the bottom 25% of the school’s students on the prior year’s test. 
“Within our school improvement plan we will write goals that guide us to plan interventions strategically for these students in both areas,” Hoffman said. 
The school met expectations for achievement and English learning progress but missed the mark in growth and equity, Holmes said. 
According to the annual report, Newcastle High School performed below target in growth, equity, achievement and ninth grade credits. The school met targets in extended graduation, four-year on-time graduation and post-secondary readiness. Tysdal noted that these scores are determined by several factors and an equation determined by the state. 
Planning for Improvement
“We are currently working on a school improvement plan. It is important to consider WY-TOPP is one assessment taken over a short time. Therefore, we are looking at several data sources including WY-TOPP to identify areas of focus,” Holmes said in an email. “Initial indicators are showing math to be the subject needing the most attention. While most students showed growth, there are some subgroups we need to target more specifically. This is an in-depth process we will be working on over the next few weeks.”
According to Tysdal, the same in-depth process is taking place at Newcastle High School, with teams of teachers looking at the data. Hoffman reported to the News Letter Journal in an email that representatives from the Wyoming Department of Education recently visited the school to explain the process and expectations for completing the improvement plan. 
“The process began with us selecting a building level team to work together to complete the plan,” Hoffman said. “From there we had all high school staff members complete the ‘High-Impact Domains & Practices Rubric’ that was given to us by the WDE.”
The information collected, he said, was recorded and sorted by the “mean and mode” to give the school the best representation of how they view themselves as staff. From that information the staff selected two improvement practices to write goals around. 
“The two improvement practice domains our team selected are in Domain C: Data-informed Planning and in Domain D: Professional Development,” Hoffman said. 
The school’s next step, he said, is to write goals specifically and determine how they will affect student achievement. These goals will then be sent to the department of education for feedback. 
“Throughout the year we will check with the WDE and report our progress regarding how we are doing with implementation and may receive more support from them if needed,” Hoffman added. 
Tysdal noted that there is no silver-bullet answer to addressing the district’s test scores, and that she believes the team will come up with ideas for the schools to try. 
She said that each school in the district will look at the big picture and things that can be changed to narrow down what the staff is not happy with and what they can attack. Tysdal cautioned that people need to remember that there are outside forces that may affect scores on the WY-TOPP test and that it may not accurately reflect what all students know and how they perform on a daily basis. 
“It is not an end all be all. It is beneficial at a system level,” she said. “The whole goal is to make learning and opportunities better for students, every day, no matter what test scores we get.”
WY-TOPP worries
According to information provided by Sonya Tysdal, the district’s curriculum director, two different grade levels saw a majority of their students performing below basic while others saw significant declines in the percentage of those performing at a proficient or advanced level. 
Last year, Newcastle’s fifth grade students were ranked 38th out of 48 districts across the state in math, with 40.35% of the students performing at a proficient or advanced level, down 6.71% from the previous year’s scores. 
In reading, the fifth grade class ranked 36th in the state, with 49.12 students performing at the proficient or advanced level, a 5.98% increase from the previous year. 
Tenth grade students in the district ranked 33rd in math, with only 36.21% of students scoring proficient or advanced, despite a 12.02% increase in performance from the year before. 
In reading, the students were ranked 40th in the state, with 41.38% of students categorized as proficient or advanced, down 10.23% from the previous year. 
Ninth grade students at Newcastle High School experienced declines in both math and reading, with 42.11% (29th in the state) of students proficient or advanced in math and 49.12% (33rd in the state) of students ranked as proficient or advanced in reading. These percentages represent a 19.29% and 26.32% decline, respectively. 
Other areas of decline in local scores were seen in fourth grade. According to the report, 54.41% of students performed at a proficient or advanced level in math, a 22.41% decrease from the previous year. The grade ranked 26th in the state. 
Also seeing a decline in performance levels was the eighth-grade class. While 52.73% (22nd in the state) of the students performed proficient or advanced in math, that was 11.98% lower than the previous year. 
 
Editor’s note: For a full breakout of district scores please see the graphic displayed with this story at newslj.com.
WY-TOPP celebrations
Newcastle Middle School is meeting expectations according to the Wyoming Department of Educations school accountability results for the 2021-22 school year. In addition to the satisfactory ranking, the school’s students performed better on the WY-TOPP test than other district schools. 
“Here is one of the big celebrations as far as WY-TOPP data.  … You’ll see that our 7th graders (now 8th) scored in the top 10 in the state for both math and ELA (English Language Arts),” said Tyler Bartlett, Newcastle Middle School principal, in an email. “The math score continues a trend of several years where they have continued to improve and climb up the rankings compared to districts across the state.” 
According to the test score report, last year’s seventh grade students ranked sixth in the state in math with 67.24% of students performing at a proficient or advanced level. This is up 22.8% from the previous year. 
“This same group (last year’s seventh graders) also had the smallest percentage of students score below basic on the 7th ELA test across the entire state,” Bartlett said. “Essentially, this means that even if all of our students weren’t proficient or advanced, nearly all of them were close.” 
The class ranked eighth in the state in reading, with 67.24% of students performing proficient or advanced, a 0.57% increase from the previous year’s results. 
Last year’s sixth grade students also saw an increase in math, with 11.81% more students performing at a proficient or advanced level. In total, 48.75% of the students performed at a proficient or advanced level, making them 28th in the state.
The class was ranked 20th in the state in reading, with 58.57% of students performing at a proficient or advanced level, a 12.98% increase from last year’s results.