Before leaving for Christmas Break, students at Union Public School District take standardized assessment tests to measure the knowledge gleaned in the first half of the year.
On Monday, the district’s three principals brought the results of those tests to the Board of Trustees to update them on how the students were performing.
Union Elementary School
Lori Wilcher, principal of Union Elementary School, told the board students at her school had a combined score of 425 on the assessment test, which is out of 700 possible points.
“We were looking at our accountability model for next year based on our winter data,” she said. “I did a little configuration of exactly what that would be December had been our test instead of April.”
Additionally, students were 45.25 percent proficient in ELA and 60.4 percent proficient in Math. On the third-grade reading gate, 82 percent of students passed, compared to 70 percent at this time last year. And, in Pre-K, 14 of the 23 students had already met the goal benchmarks for students heading into kindergarten, Wilcher said.
On last year’s state tests, Union Elementary School scored 543, and with a semester to go, Wilcher said she was pleased with her student’s progress. However, with a semester to go, she said she wanted to continue growing and increasing student’s performance to do even better on the state test.
Union Middle School
Union Middle School principal Steven Holifield said one of his goals when he took the job in July was to create a school leadership team to help develop goals for the students.
At the beginning of the year, he said, the goal was to be 60 percent proficient in ELA and 67 percent in Math school-wide. According to the December data, he said, Union Middle School has met its ELA goal, with 60 percent ELA proficiency and is at 65 percent proficiency in Math.
“We’re only two percent away from reaching our school-wide goal,” he said. “And of course, with math, there are a lot of standards the teachers have not taught.”
Meeting school-wide goals is good, but Holifield said Union Middle School isn’t satisfied with just being proficient. He said the students and staff were continuing to work hard to grow even more before taking the state assessment tests in April.
Union High School
At Union High School, Principal Lee Killen said, students were 46 percent proficient in algebra, 39 percent proficient in English and 56 percent proficient in U.S. History at level five, which is the highest proficiency level possible, based on December assessment tests.
The issue, Killen said, is Biology, where students are only 23 percent proficient at level three.
“The proficiency numbers kind of go down, the way I have it figured, as [the proficiency level] goes up,” he said.
Superintendent Tyler Hansford said Mississippi Department of Education implemented a new Biology test this year, and he could understand why students were having a hard time.
“The new test, whatever knowledge I had about Biology test when flat out the door when they put that new test in there,” he said.
Hansford said he and a teacher, both with bachelor’s degrees in biology, took the test to see what it was like and scored 80 percent.
“It’s a doosy,” he said.
The school has some work to do in Biology, but the students and teachers are working hard to meet their goal in time for state testing, Killen said.
High school students also take preliminary state tests in December, Killen said, and results should be back on those soon.
