MANCHESTER – Like many school districts across the state, township educators reviewed the results of their Start Strong testing which revealed areas in need of improvement from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even as most school districts move from mandatory to optional masking in schools, the impact over the last two and a half years on students has had its toll on students academically.
The Start Strong assessment was but one indicator of that and Diane Pedroza, the school district’s director of curriculum recently presented the assessments from tests taken last autumn.
Pedroza showed a PowerPoint presentation stating that the Start Strong assessments were administered in English language arts (ELA) grades 4-10, mathematics grades 4-12 algebra I, algebra II and geometry as well as in science grades 6, 9 and 12.
The tests were administered in approximately 45-60 minutes and provided immediate results to educators through the assessment platform according to Pedroza.
Pedroza who was joined by members of her curriculum team during the presentation said, “the tests were given to our students in October. The range goes from one to three. One being the lowest needing the most support and three being the less support given.”
She added that 1,444 students were assessed as she showed a visual representation of how the students performed. “There were areas broken up to show where more support was needed and we had it broken down into standards. It was immediate response, question by question and we were able to get that information right into the teachers’ hands.”
Pedroza reported to the Board that Algebra I was an area of concern “where we are really looking at 8th grade content standards. In sciences we had a fairly new assessment and it provided us with some great information for our staff to glean for our students. We looked at the areas of strength and the areas of concern and we made presentations on those type of questions.”
She added that the testing was also broken down by race and other demographic features “and allows us to go by each target group. There is a lot of information. We also broke it down by program which is by each particular level and we are looking at different groups such as special education students.
Board President Ken Pate said, “it looks like every category shows more strong support was needed. Will this be snowballing?”
Pate acknowledged that there was a social side to the impact of the pandemic on students which included depression.
Board member Gayle Mount asked “are we offering programs before and after school to help these kids?”
“The nice thing about getting all this information so efficiently and quickly is that we took that information and made it part of our after-school program and we used it to actually be able to tailor our programs based upon the needs and the lessons we are doing with our kids,” Pedroza replied.
She said those who needed additional help beyond what was provided by teachers were assisted through programs approved by their school principals.
“I can tell you we were able to share with some of the other districts and we were in line with what is going on there. It was not intended for to do anything other than what was going on within the district and to see what the effects of the pandemic were and try to remediate them that way,” she added.
She said, “at our first look we were a little concerned because there is a lot of support that is needed.”
“Yes, every category across the board,” Pate again noted.
Based on these assessments, the staff can target the skills that need more work, Pedroza said.
