State PSSA Test Scores Released - Nazareth Scores Available here.

The Morning Call announced on Saturday, August 19, 2006 that the latest statewide results for the PSSA tests were released and on their web site: www.mcall.com was a link to a PDF including results for all districts (67 pages total, Northampton County is on pages 51 &52).

Can these numbers tell us much? Maybe, maybe not. It would seem to me based on looking only at Nazareth's scores that students come to school well-prepared, especially in math, and are well served in kindergarten through 2nd grade resulting in pretty strong 3rd grade scores.

Unfortunately, by the end of elementary school, the number of students in the advanced level drops and in the below basic level increases. The same is true from the beginning to end of Middle School. And by the time a student is tested in High School the number below basic math doubles from 8th grade, while those in advanced remains constant. Conversely, the number below basic in reading is constant while the number in advanced drops by 10%.

There are a lot of results and a lot of numbers so here, I'm simply going to present the % advanced, and the % below basic - the hi-lo approach. Again, go to the links above for all results.

Level	Math Advanced	Math Below	English Advanced	English Below
Elementary	51%	6%	34%	11%
Middle School	41%	9%	44%	7%
High School	33%	21%	38%	10%

Drilling down into these results some of the most interesting shifts to my observation are:

• In 3rd grade only 2% of students are below basic in math, but in 4th grade the number rises to 10%.
• From 4th to 5th grade those scoring in high math and high reading drop from 53 and 39% to 42 and 28%, respectively.
• Despite the drop in reading (for the advanced level) from 39% in 4th to 28% in 5th, the scores increase to 34% in 6th and soar to 51% and 48% in 7th and 8th grade before dropping back to 38% in 11th grade.
• In 8th grade the advanced math drops 15% from 46% in 7th grade to 31% in 8th grade.

I'll next examine Nazareth compared to other districts, but in the meantime, what do you think of these results in and of themselves? Does the district need to put a greater emphasis on math during middle school and high school? Does it seem that the middle school's 6th and 7th grades "teach to the test" resulting in a temporary bump? To that end, how do you improve scores without teaching to the test?