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Date: 4/20/2022
SOUTHWICK — Mid-year data from the Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District showed some gains in the effort to get students back on track after the pandemic interrupted their education.
The principals of all three district schools presented their school’s data last week to the School Committee and Superintendent Jennifer Willard.
Woodland School Principal Kimberly Saso said that among all students at the elementary school, 37 began the year either at their grade level or above it in mathematics, according to iReady assessment data from tests the students take throughout the year. By the middle of the school year, Saso said that 112 students were at or above grade level in math.
Also at the beginning of the year, 227 students were below expected grade level in their assessments. By the middle of the year that number fell to 152.
“We’re seeing the movement we want to be seeing across all grades,” said Saso.
Though many students at Woodland remain below the expected grade level, Saso said that work is still being done to get them caught up, including through what the district calls “just in time teaching,” which is called accelerated learning by the state.
Just in time teaching methods aim to introduce students to base concepts and prerequisite skills so they have the basic foundational knowledge to succeed in future units in a given class.
Saso said that there was less growth in reading than there was in math for Woodland students, but there was some measurable progress.
At the beginning of the year among all students, 93 were at or above grade level for reading. That number increased to 118 by the middle of the year. One hundred eighty-three students began the year below the expected reading level for their grade, and that number fell to 152 by the middle of the year.
Principal Erin Carrier of Powder Mill School measured her student’s gains by percentages in her presentation. For math, there was an 18 percent increase in students who were at or above grade level from the beginning to the end of the year. There was also a 14 percent decrease in students two or more grade levels below their expected grade level.
The biggest example of progress at Powder Mill was the drop in the percentage of students who were three or more grade levels below their actual grade level in math. At the beginning of the year 51 students were assessed as being three grade levels below their actual grade. By mid-year, that fell to just 15 students.
“That is huge. These are kids who were really struggling. It takes a lot of time with instructors to do that,” said Carrier.
For English and language arts at Powder Mill, there was a 13 percent increase in students who were at or above grade level through the first half of the year, and a 12 percent drop in students two or more grade levels below their own.
Southwick Regional School data only covered seventh and eighth grades for reading and math. Principal Joseph Turmel said that 100 percent of grade 7 students were at or above grade level for phonics and “high frequency words.”
Grade 7 reading data showed mixed results overall. Students reading at or above their grade level rose from 24 to 27 percent. Students reading one grade level below Grade 7 rose from 19 to 20 percent. There was an increase from 13 percent to 16 percent of Grade 7 students reading two grade levels below their own, but a decrease from 24 to 16 percent for students with a reading level three or more levels below their own.
In Grade 7 math, Turmel said there was an increase from 5 percent of students to 14 percent who were at or above their grade level. The percent of students on grade level below their own in math dropped from 50 percent to 33 percent.
“We are doing a really nice job closing gaps from the fall to the middle of the year,” said Turmel.
In eighth grade reading there were modest gains of students reading at or above their grade level from 30 to 35 percent, and overall decreases in students reading below their grade levels.
Eighth grade math showed a decrease of about 2 percent in students greatly struggling at their grade level. There were slight increases in eighth graders who were assessed at one or two grade levels below eighth grade math, but there was also an increase from 17 percent to 22 percent of students who were assessed at or above eighth grade math.