Oregon school districts continued to improve in their English, math and science proficiency, but are still below pre-pandemic levels, according to newly released data from the Oregon Department of Education.<\/p>\n
Junction City School District in Lane County was one of a few districts that saw more significant gains \u2013 especially in English language arts.<\/p>\n
Coming out of the pandemic in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 30% of Junction City third graders that participated in standardized testing were proficient in reading and writing. When students were tested near the end of last school year, nearly 52% were proficient, according to the new data.<\/p>\n
Statewide, about 41.5% of last school year\u2019s third graders were proficient in language arts according to ODE data, a slight increase from last year. In 2019, about 47% of third graders statewide were proficient in reading.<\/p>\n
Junction City Superintendent Katie Dawson said her district has used a research-backed method, known as the science of reading, to teach language arts. She said the district is also focused on using data to make decisions and supporting collaboration and professional development between teachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just doing a few things, but we\u2019re going to do them really well,\u201d Dawson said.<\/p>\n
She said last year there was also a heavy emphasis on tutoring.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids who are needing a little bit extra support really get targeted, intensive support,\u201d she said. \u201cI do think that was really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a virtual press conference this week, ODE Director Charlene Williams said the state is focused on steady, incremental improvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeaningful change doesn\u2019t happen overnight, and yet we need to act with urgency,\u201d Williams said. \u201cWe need to keep our foot on the gas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oregon students made incremental progress in math and English according to standardized tests results. But the results are nowhere near the targets the state expects to reach during the 2029-2030 school year.<\/p>\n
Under a new accountability system, that\u2019s when school districts are supposed to meet performance growth targets set by the state. At the same time, Oregon\u2019s policy allowing students to opt-out of these tests raises questions about whether these results are an accurate assessment of student learning.<\/p>\n
Still, ODE officials said about half of Oregon\u2019s school districts with strong participation saw \u201cgrowth\u201d in ELA, and 102 of them saw \u201cgrowth\u201d in math.<\/p>\n
Junction City, Bethel and Springfield School Districts had more than 90% of students participating in standardized testing last year for English language arts. Participation in Eugene 4J School Districts was about 84%. Participation in math standardized testing was a few points lower for all those districts.<\/p>\n
ODE officials said the state spent roughly $93 million in grants to help school districts move to research-backed science of reading style instruction.<\/p>\n
The state has also set aside money for summer learning, improving access and tutoring.<\/p>\n
Eugene and Springfield also made some progress in reading and writing, with Eugene 4J seeing its scores improve by nearly 4 points with roughly 48.3% of its third graders proficient and Springfield seeing a 3% improvement with 41% proficient.<\/p>\n
Bethel\u2019s reading scores declined slightly this school year with 29.2% proficient, but the district did see an improvement in middle school math scores. About 27.5% of eighth graders were proficient for their grade level, compared to 21% last year.<\/p>\n
In Springfield, 28.1% of eighth graders scored proficient in math for their grade level compared to 24.1% last year.<\/p>\n
Eugene 4J School District\u2019s math proficiency improved by about a half-percent, with 35.7% of eight graders proficient.<\/p>\n
On average, 30% of Oregon\u2019s eighth graders are proficient in math for their grade level.<\/p>\n
OPB reporter Elizabeth Miller contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oregon school districts continued to improve in their English, math and science proficiency, but are still below pre-pandemic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[21933,121398,128,130,129,121399],"class_list":["post-292979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-literacy","tag-oregon-department-of-education","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-standardized-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}