Numbers add up to excellence
Ms. Finney would have you believe that Hayden Meadows' 3-star rating is the fault of PYP. Let's look at more than one number and see if we come up with the same conclusion.
The IRI - the Idaho Reading Indicator - is one tool the state and district use to evaluate how your school is doing. It is given to students in kindergarten through third grade. Here are Hayden Meadows' most recent, 2012 spring scores of students who passed the test: K- 97.5%; 1st -93.26%; 2nd - 80.9%; and 3rd - 85.88% compared to the district average of 91.72%; 81.43%; 75.41% and 79.10%, respectively. We exceeded the district in all categories. In fact, we had our overall highest score in our school's history last year. Could this be PYP's fault?
Another rating indicator used by the state and district is the ISAT. It is taken in grades 3 through 5. If we want to see if PYP is bringing us down let's look at the reading scores over a 5-year period, about the time Meadows started the application process to become a PYP school. The percentage shows the amount of students proficient or advanced in reading.
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
3rd grade- 81% 93% 96% 96% 96%
4th grade- 85% 87% 91% 95% 92%
5th grade- 93% 93% 89% 95% 97%
This certainly looks like an overall upward trend to me. Is PYP to blame? How then are we getting a 3 star? Let's look at another elementary school in our district that is getting a 5-star rating. We are very proud of their rating and happy for them. Here are their ISAT scores over the same 5-year period:
3rd grade- 91% 87% 83% 79% 91%
4th grade- 88% 94% 79% 93% 85%
5th grade- 87% 91% 89% 86% 84%
As you can see their scores are lower than ours yet they are a 5-star school. It has to do with growth. All I will say is when you are already stretched to reach the stars you don't have as much room to grow.
Another indicator for a quality school measured by the state and district is called Instructional Review. Administrators visit classrooms to observe and evaluate our teaching. They are looking for specific indicators of good teaching, like student engagement with the lesson, students taking responsibility for their own learning, and higher order questions asked by the teacher. Hayden Meadows has always scored near or at the top in all three categories. In fact, we scored a 99.97% in students engaged with the lesson all or most of the time.
If PYP brings us historic highs on our IRI, an upward trend in our ISATs and near or at the top in higher level questioning and student engagement, then I'm all for it. I'm glad Ms. Finney was wondering about our 3 star rating; with all the great things about us I was wondering, too.
Roberta Ewert is a fifth-grade teacher at Hayden Meadows, where she's been teaching since the school opened in 1992.