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<< Delaware Education News Back Issues
2009 Statewide DSTP Test Results Test scores of Delaware students in grades 2-10 continue to stabilize in reading and mathematics, according to results of the March 2009 Delaware Student Testing Program . The results are as follows: Mathematics: At grades 2-5, students meeting or exceeding the standard ranges from 87% in grade 2 to 77% in grade 5. In grades 6-8, middle school student scores range from 75% in grade 6 to 66% in grade 8. At the high school level, grade 9 student scores increased to 55% while grade 10 student scores decreased slightly to 56%. Comparing test scores to last year's results, 78% of children tested in the third grade met the standard - a one percentage point gain from the scores of last year's third graders. In the fifth grade, 77% of students tested met the standard, also a one percentage point increase from last year's scores. The proportion of this year's eighth grade students meeting or exceeding the standard is at 66%, which is a one percentage point increase over last year's eighth graders, while in the tenth grade, 56% performed at or above standard, two percentage points lower than the tenth graders of 2008. Reading: In grades 2-5, the trend is that 83% of students statewide are meeting the standard in reading. At the middle school grades, students are scoring at 83% while at the high school grades, the range of scores is between 72%. Writing: In 2009, only three grades were tested: 5, 8 and 10. In grade 5, writing scores of students who met or exceeded the standard declined slightly to 60%, a two percentage point decrease from 2008. At grade 8, the middle school grades, grade 8 students scored at 78%, a three percentage point decline from 2008. At the high school level, grade 10 students scored at 84%, a three percentage point increase from last year. The writing assessment consists of two items: a stand alone prompt to which students respond and a text based item which asks students to read a passage and write a response to a specific question. Delaware students in grades 2-10 once again participated in the nationally-normed Stanford Achievement Test, 10th Edition (SAT 10). Comprising nearly 1/3 of the questions on the DSTP exams in reading and math, the SAT 10 allows Delaware to compare test results against students in the same grade across the country who took the same test and shows the percentage of Delaware students who scored as well as or better than other students throughout the nation.
$74 Million in Recovery Funds Now Available for Delaware to Save Jobs and Drive Education Reform $74 million is now available for Delaware under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. This funding will lay the foundation for a generation of education reform and help save hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs at risk of state and local budget cuts. Delaware will be eligible to apply for another $36 million this fall. Today’s funding is being made available per Delaware’s successful completion of Part 1 of the State Stabilization Application, which was made available on April 1.
Delaware AP Participation Rate, Number of Exams Taken and High Scores Continue to Increase; SAT Participation Ranked Eighth in U. S. The number of Delaware public school students participating in Advanced Placement (AP) continued to climb compared to last year's results including the number of examinations taken by students and the number of scores at "3" or higher. Compared to 2008, the number of public school students participating in AP examinations increased by 3.9% while over the past five years, that increase has risen to 15%. In 2009, the number of AP exams increased by 8.2%; in two years the percentage has risen 12.8%. Also, AP participation rates increased for American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic and White test takers in the past year. In the past five years, the participation rate increased 67% for Hispanic test takers, the most for any ethnic group. ACT Results
The percentage of U.S. high school graduates meeting all four of ACT’s College Readiness Benchmarks increased slightly in 2009 as the pool of students taking the ACT® continued to expand, according to the not-for-profit ACT’s annual grad class report on college readiness. Nevertheless, the findings suggest continued effort to improve college readiness is needed on the part of states and school districts. Delaware ACT Report: http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/states/Delaware.pdf SAT Results More than 1.5 million students (1,530,128) in the class of 2009 took the SAT, the most widely used and researched standardized college admission test. Delaware SAT Report: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/DE_09_03_03_01.pdf New Study Finds Little Evidence That Federal Emphasis on “Proficient” Performance Has Shortchanged Advanced or Low-Achieving Students
Many States Show Gains Since 2002 at All Achievement Levels
Delaware Report:
Student performance on state reading and math tests has generally risen at three achievement levels, according to a 50-state study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP). The study found more states with gains than declines in the percentages of students reaching or exceeding the basic, proficient, and advanced levels of achievement, and relatively few instances of sizeable declines in the percentage scoring below the basic level.
Achievement also improved in most states at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
The CEP study analyzed test score trends, where available, from 2002, the year the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) took effect, through 2008. (Some states did not have trends going back to 2002 because they had adopted new tests or made other major changes in their testing systems.) The study expands on CEP’s previous two reports on achievement by examining, for the first time, test results at the “advanced” level and at the “basic” level-and-above—as well as at the “proficient” level and above, which is the benchmark that matters most for federal accountability under NCLB. ASSESSING PERFORMANCE AT LEVELS ABOVE AND BELOW PROFICIENT
CEP found that, even though NCLB creates incentives for schools to focus on ensuring students reach the proficient level, states posted gains at the advanced and basic-and-above levels as well. At the basic-and-above level, 73 percent of the trend lines analyzed across various subjects and grades showed gains. At the advanced level, 71 percent of the trend lines analyzed showed improvement.
“If accountability policies were indeed shortchanging high- and low-achieving students, we would expect to see stagnation or decline at the basic and advanced levels,” said Jack Jennings, CEP’s president and CEO. “Instead, the percentages of students scoring at the basic-and-above and advanced levels have increased much more often than they have decreased, especially in the lower grades.”
Gains were somewhat more prevalent at the proficient-and-above level than at the other two achievement levels. Of the trend lines analyzed at the proficient-and-above level, 83 percent displayed gains, while 15 percent showed declines. The size of the gains was also larger, on average, at the proficient-and-above level. However, this may be partly due to a test-related statistical issue: When average test scores go up, the percentage of students at the proficient level tends to grow faster than at the basic and advanced levels because more students’ scores tend to be clustered near the proficient level.
At the advanced level, the size of the gains in elementary and middle school math were close or equal to those at the proficient level and there were more upward trends than downward. These findings generally point to a significant movement of students from proficient to advanced. At the basic level, too, there were more gains than declines. Although some states posted declines at the basic level, most were slight.
“There are several possible explanations for the upward trends. The most hopeful explanation is that students are learning more and consequently are performing better on state tests,” Jennings said. “There is probably also a cumulative effect of test-focused instruction at work.”
More gains have been made in math than in reading, according to the report. The size of the percentage gains across all states was greater in math than in reading, data which is confirmed by the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
HIGH SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT CONTINUES TO LAG
The report notes that achievement at the high school level has improved but still lags behind elementary and middle school achievement. The average annual percentage point gains for high school students tended to be lower than at the elementary or middle school levels. There may be several reasons for the divergence in performance between students at the lower and higher grades, among them that it is more difficult to engage and motive high school students or that high schools receive fewer federal resources.
Although CEP collected test data from all 50 states, achievement trends were included in the report only for states with at least three years of comparable test data for a particular subject, grade, and achievement level. A change in test results was considered to be a “trend” only if it was based on at least three years of data in order to account for yearly fluctuations in test scores that are unrelated to students’ learning.
The report, titled State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part I: Is the Emphasis on “Proficiency” Shortchanging Higher- and Lower-Achieving Students?, is available at
Individual state profiles are available at:
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