LWSD Students Outperform State Peers in All Areas of State Assessment Tests

Students in the (LWSD) outperformed their Washington state peers in all areas of the 2010-2011 state assessment tests, according to data released Tuesday by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Students no longer take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), which was the longtime measure for how students were learning the state standards. The state assessment tests have been reformulated into the the Measures of Student Progress for grades 3-8 and the High School Proficiency Exam for grade 10.

In many areas, the percentage of LWSD students who passed their exams was 10 percent or more above the statewide average.

The district also showed improvement over its 2009-2010 scores in most areas, with the exception of third- and fifth-grade reading, which showed a decline of less than one percentage point, and seventh-grade reading and math, which dropped from passing rates of 81.1 to 74.5 percent and 77.7 to 74.0 percent, respectively.

LWSD spokeswoman Kathryn Reith said the district's 6.6-percent drop in seventh-grade reading mirrors a 7-percent drop in the state average over the same time period for the same subject and grade level, which likely points to an anomaly with the exam, not a problem with the capability of the district's students.

“Obviously we’d rather see higher scores, but that’s not such a worrisome thing,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Redmond made gains of more than 20 percentage points in passing rates for fifth-grade science and both third- and fifth-grade math. Although Reith said the school's 2009-2010 scores were lower than usual, she said teachers at Einstein, which receives Title 1 funding for extra instructional staff, also spent the 2010-2011 year paying special attention to math skills.

"There are some big jumps there that are showing some real hard work went on,” she said.

For more detail on the LWSD scores, click here to look at the district report card prepared by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The newly released scores include the new math End of Course tests that are designed to be taken directly following a high school student's algebra or geometry class.

The new math tests were redesigned and given last year for the first time to address complaints that the old high school WASL math tests were not clear and were often not related to the actual classes that students were taking.

“The results from the end-of-course exams are encouraging, but we still have plenty of work to do to increase our math scores,” State Superintendent Randy Dorn said in a prepared statement. “I believe the first-time passing rates are improved from the days of the old math WASL for two primary reasons: teachers have told me our new math learning standards are clearer and students are taking the exams at the end of their respective classes.”

LWSD vs. the State, 2010-2011 passing rates

Grade Level

State Reading

LWSD  Reading

State Math

LWSD Math

State Writing

LWSD  Writing

State Science

LWSD  Science

3rd Grade

73.1%

87.9%

61.5%

76.8%

4th Grade

67.3%

84.9%

59.3%

77.2%

61.4%

81.9%

5th Grade

67.6%

84.7%

61.2%

75.3%

55.6%

80.4%

6th Grade

70.6%

86.7%

58.8%

79.0%

7th Grade

56.4%

74.5%

56.9%

74.0%

71.0%

86.9%

8th Grade

68.6%

86.9%

50.3%

69.7%

61.5%

85.2%

10th Grade

82.3%

91.8%

86.0%

93.5%

49.7%

74.1%

10th Grade Math End of Course

State

LWSD

Year 1

62.4%

79.6%

Year 2

72.9%

82.4%