Brandywine, Buchanan, Niles assess fall scores

Angie Cramer didn’t have much positive to report to the Niles Community Schools Board of Education during a presentation of the district’s fall 2013 Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) tests.

The school’s curriculum director said Monday that the district’s fourth- and fifth-grade students were the only groups recording proficiency scores higher than the state average. Those scores came in the math and reading tests.

“When you look at our MEAP scores that belong to our district they have either fallen or have stayed flat the past five years,” Cramer said. “For the past three years we have fallen below the state average.”

Factors contributing to the scores, Cramer said, include the district focusing more heavily on the Northwest Evaluation Association test rather than the MEAP the last three years. The district also stopped offering test preparation for the MEAP about three years ago.

“All those test taking strategies we were no longer doing with the students,” she said. “That could be a definite contributing factor to the drop in those scores.”

As for Brandywine Community Schools, the district registered proficiency levels above the state average in third grade reading, sixth grade reading, third grade math and sixth grade math.

Brandywine’s third grade math proficiency was the highest in Berrien County.

“The general takeaway is that we are on the right track with reading,” said Brandywine Supt. John Jarpe. “Other than (third grade math) we are not pleased with our math scores. We really need to step it up like we have with the reading.”

Buchanan Community Schools did better than the state average in sixth- and seventh-grade reading, sixth- and seventh-grade math, fifth-grade science, sixth- and ninth-grade social studies and seventh grade writing.

“I think we are moving in the right direction,” said Buchanan Supt. Andrea van der Laan. “We’ve built district teams that are looking at alignment K-12 and they are starting to really understand their role. They are now looking at resources and what things they need to get into teachers’ hands. They are also starting to look at data to say what should we be checking on a couple of times a year at the district level to make sure our kids are progressing.”

This is the last year for the MEAP as the state will implement a new testing program in the spring of 2015.