Anchorage Daily News

Reading, writing and math scores for Anchorage public school students showed nearly across-the-board declines last year, according to the district's annual report card.

The recently released data showed that Anchorage schools did not make progress toward meeting the education standards set by the state in 2003.

But while test scores are down slightly, the district did make a dent in its dropout rate by keeping more kids in school.

The report shows how students are doing in a variety of ways, including achievement differences between ethnic groups, whether the same students improved year to year, and how different high schools compare. The results of the Standards Based Assessment tests taken by students in grades three through 10 are also tabulated. On those tests, students and schools in almost all subject areas and grade levels lost ground.

Among the findings in the report:

• In Anchorage, 81 percent of students in grades three through 10 were proficient in reading and writing. That's down one percentage point from the year before.

• Math showed a deeper dip, from 76 percent proficiency in the 2006-2007 academic year to 73 percent proficiency last year.

• The same student's proficiency levels one year to the next generally eroded.

• Fewer 10th-graders passed the high school exit exam, a test required for a diploma that students first take in the 10th grade, then repeat in the 11th or 12th grades until they pass.

• The public high schools showed a wide range of graduation rates.

The slipping grades come on the heels of four years of improved scores.

"We were disappointed with the slight downward trend but we're going to work really, really hard in every school to get the trend reversed and move back up again," said School District Superintendent Carol Comeau.

The annual report was developed to measure the district's academic achievements year to year by giving students in each grade the same tests, year after year. Every public school in the state has something similar, measuring its students with the same statewide tests.

Alaska statewide results on reading, writing and math were also slightly down last year after several years of improvement, according to the state Department of Education and Early Development.

IS CHANGE NEEDED?

School administrators caution against overreacting to a one-year drop in numbers.

"The scores did dip slightly last year, no question about it, and that does concern us," said Anchorage assistant superintendent Rhonda Gardner. "It would be inappropriate for us to change dramatically something we have been doing and having great success with ... based on one year's data."

If the next report card shows eroding grades again, then the district will need to take a hard look at what needs to be fixed, Gardner said.

In the meantime, the district is taking some steps. Superintendent Comeau has asked every school to write an action plan. Math tutors have been sent into high schools to help teachers learn how to teach better. And the district is working with English teachers to help kids on grammar and punctuation -- two areas of writing that they think kids need to improve.

The math and writing numbers have been an area of concern for the district for several years, administrators say.

While 79 percent of third-graders passed proficiency tests for math last year, only 66 percent of 10th-graders did.

Mike Henry, director of high school education, said the math tutors will work with teachers to help identify where kids are falling short.

WHERE SCORES IMPROVED

In one encouraging finding, the district's dropout rate went from 5.1 percent to 4.2 percent. The rate measures the percentage of students who leave school and don't go to another school or school program. Henry attributes some of the decrease to better accounting methods -- keeping track of kids who previously got lost in the system and were counted as dropouts when they really weren't -- and also increased intervention methods by high school administrators and teachers.

Ninth-graders also performed slightly better on reading, writing and math. Henry and Comeau attribute it to strong efforts by high school teachers to ease kids into high school through programs like the "freshman houses" that separate the first-year high schoolers from the upperclassmen to create a more personal, less intimidating school experience.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

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