achievement gaps are narrowing<\/a> with historically underserved student groups making the fastest gains.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now is that who had previously been underperforming are now starting to catch up to students that did not historically underperform,\u201d said Mary Ann Maxwell, the assistant superintendent of academics for Austin ISD.<\/p>\n
According to the district, 31% of its second graders were recommended for intervention at the beginning of the school year for math. That percentage fell to 22% after the mid-year testing. Literacy also saw a positive trend, with 26% of students needing intervention at the beginning of the year to now 21% during the middle of the year.<\/p>\n
Maxwell says their approach is a top-down effort focusing strongly on training administrators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can support teachers with observations, with coaching feedback on what they\u2019re seeing in the classroom, then it becomes a much more sustainable system very early on,\u201d Maxwell said.<\/p>\n
San Antonio ISD is also seeing improvements with its second graders from the beginning of the year to now. For math, it dropped from 61% of students needing intervention to 50%. For reading, it fell from 52% being recommended for intervention to 47%.<\/p>\n
At Pleasant Hill Elementary School, Carriker-Cavin and her second-grade team show students their scores from the testing, align goals and discuss what they need to work on to achieve them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found that that has been a really effective way to get them motivated and to buy in to their own learning,\u201d Carriker-Cavin said.<\/p>\n
These efforts at Austin ISD appear to be working. Carriker-Cavin says she and her team were thrilled at the results of the mid-year tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy team and I celebrated together,\u201d Carriker-Cavin said. \u201cIt is really rewarding to see that the hard work that we\u2019ve put into our students is measurable, is recognized and just to feel that what we\u2019re doing is making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district is projecting that the number of schools with \u201cF\u201d ratings is expected to drop from 23 to less than 15 for the 2026 testing year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014\u00a0Achievement gaps at Austin Independent School District are narrowing. The district is projecting eight of its schools…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[836,5176,132,134,133,5604,1570,102,163,138,6364,223,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-215467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-education","tag-app-latest-education-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-what-you-need-to-know","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-education","tag-el-paso","tag-geraldine-torrellas","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}