Posted Wednesday, September 18, 2019
The Walton Central School District has showed improvement in the 3-8 state tests.
The district has a large increase in the amount of students who took the tests, which allows WCS to get a much better picture of how it fares in comparison with other districts, as well as within the state.
So how did the district fare? Walton saw a jump of 81 students take the ELA 3-8 assessment, and 77 in math. That jump revealed 47 more students in ELA and 14 more in math were proficient as compared to last year.
Fifth grade doubled the number of students reaching proficiency in ELA over last year. The Grade 5 team introduced a writing strategy to the students, which greatly increased the love of writing.
Sixth-grade proficiency remained at 47 percent, with 25 more students tested this year.
Results of the grades 6 and 7 ELA tests were in the top 20 percent of schools in DCMO BOCES, and in the top six percent of the Southern Tier Regional Information Center.
Middle school initiatives have helped this improvement. Some of those initiatives include adding a literacy block to the school day, utilizing a district-hired consultant to develop instruction based on testing results of students as they came up through elementary school, and a school-wide initiative to increase numbers of students participating in state testing.
“We expect to see a steady increase in ELA results for the coming 2019-20 school year,” said Walton’s Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Jane O’Shea. “The district will be exploring math initiatives this year and hopes to see the start of a steady increase in achievement levels next year and beyond”