Student Winter Assessment: Bleak

Today the South Hunterdon Regional School District released a "Winter 2025 Benchmarks" report as part of an effort to better gauge student achievement and where students may be strugglijng. This was based extensively on the iReady product by the company Curriculum Associates. It should be noted the district has spent a fortune on this software, and began literal marketing campaigns within the schools aimed at students to foster the highest possible score. The marketing urged children to be highly motivated for the testing and to do their absolute best.

The report is available here. The main focus is to see the highest grade level students are testing at, and indicates whether how many students are above, at, or below grade level, and in the case of below, how far below.

The report is sobering to say the least.

What it is showing is that most of our students are testing below grade level. More concerning, the trends get worse as the grade level increases. The good news, such as it is, is that progress has been made between Fall and Winter testing.

K-2 Reading Progress

Looking at K-2 Reading as an example, 63% of Kindergartenders were 1 grade below reading level, which improved to 34% of grade K students. By Grade 2, we see 40% of students 1 grade level below in the Fall, and 29 two grade levels below. Those improve to 11% and 36% by the Winter.

7th and 8th Grade Reading Progress

As we move up grade levels we start seeing more and more red and pink. By the 7th grade we see 45% of students are 3 or more levels below grade, 12% are 2 levels. Just 28% are at or above grade level. By 8th grade the numbers only marginally better.

We see a similar improvement by the Winter as we did with earlier grades.

While it is encouraging that the students are showing improvement between Fall and Winter, it is not clear if those improvements are organic, or if students were simply taught more closely to the iReady program e.g. teaching to the test, as opposed to teaching to subject mastery.