Schools aim to increase test scores

By KRIS GONZALEZ, Fort Jackson LeaderJanuary 21, 2010

Schools aim to increase test scores
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

FORT JACKSON, S.C. -- While Fort Jackson elementary school students enjoyed a four-day weekend to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, their teachers remained busy in their classrooms.

Aside from preparing report cards and attending training workshops, teachers and staff laid out goals to update the schools' plan of action for improving math and reading levels among their students.

During a special meeting last week, teachers and staff from C.C. Pinckney Elementary School focused on adding "differentiated instruction" into their curricula, which incorporates lesson plans tailored to meet students' individual needs.

"We're making sure teachers are not being cookie cutters," said Randy James, sixth grade teacher and chairman of the school's Continuous School Improvement committee. "That they're not having every student do exactly the same thing."

Because elementary schools on military installations get students at such different levels, James said focusing on individual needs is a better way to help students progress.

"Whatever level we get the students, we try to move them forward," he said.

With differentiated instruction, teachers can still expect their students to progress to a certain point, but they must allow for the students' difference to get them to that point, he said.

"A teacher's goal may be to have their students multiply (a certain set of numbers) by the end of year," he said. "How they get those students to do that may be different. Some may need manipulatives, some may need to draw a picture of it, while others may just know it off the top of their head because they've been practicing their (multiplication) tables.

"It's not so much that you're in the front of the room being the lecturer, but you're being more of a facilitator in the classroom," he said. "You're setting up centers where the kids can get together and do collaborative learning that will hopefully help them as they get older and move into the workplace."

The emphasis on implementing differentiated instruction comes in the wake of a recent school board meeting in which Superintendent Samantha Ingram gave an overview of assessment scores for the Department of Defense Education Activity schools.

Sixty percent of Fort Jackson students in grades three through six are at or above standards in reading, while less than half are at or above standards in math. Sixty percent of seventh and eighth graders are performing at or above standards in reading, while 65 percent are at or above standards in math.

Though she said the scores seem alarming, Ingram said she's confident that Fort Jackson teachers and administrators can assist students in raising those scores, so that 75 percent of all Fort Jackson students are at or above standards by the 2011-12 school year.

"We've already started implementing strategies to close the gap," Ingram said. "We feel assured that once we have time to get those strategies implemented, we'll start seeing results."

James said he wants to reassure parents that even though test scores are very useful for planning purposes, they are only one snapshot of how well a student, or school, is doing.

He said he realizes it may seem a daunting task, but reaching the district's goal of 75 percent is an achievable thing.

"We can do this," he said. "We are not so far behind our goal of where we went to get to. We know we're doing a good job, let's figure out how we can do a better job."