Wabash County schools fare well on ISTEP scores

County schools fare well on ISTEP scores

Posted: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 4:00 am | Updated: 4:08 pm, Tue Jul 10, 2012.

By Sheila Rhoades, srhoades@wabashplaindealer.com

Seven of 12 schools in Wabash County either met or exceeded the state’s percentage in passing both the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math portions of the ISTEP test.

Overall, 71 percent of Hoosier students passed both portions during the 2011-12 school year, a 1 percent gain on the previous school year.

Manchester Community Schools Superintendent Bill Reichhart said the scores looked good for MCS.

“I’m pretty pleased with the results for Manchester,” he said. “I believe a lot of the success in language arts was due to the added remediation class this year.”

He said thanks to the hard work of teachers, students and parents, the program was a huge success.

“I don’t mean to compare, but we are also pretty pleased that Manchester Elementary School was the top performing school in the county.

“Our overall Math was 88.3 percent and that’s a 5.3 percent growth over last year,” he said. “And considering our poverty rate has increased, I’d say that’s pretty good.”

Manchester Jr.-Sr. High School had a pass percentage in ELA of 81.5 percent in the seventh grade and 75 percent in the eighth grade. In Math, the seventh grade had an 88 percent, while the eighth grade turned out 84.8 percent.

The percentage of students passing in both Math and ELA from the seventh grade was 75.9 percent, with 71.4 percent of eighth graders passing.

Manchester Elementary School was also showed 88.2 percent of third graders and 90.9 percent of fourth graders passing ELA. In Math, 87.4 percent of third graders and 96.4 percent of fourth graders passed. A total of 82.7 percent of third graders and 87.3 percent of fourth graders passed both tests.

Manchester Intermediate School held steady with 79.7 percent of fifth-grade students passing ELA and 94.3 percent passing Math. A little over 77 percent passed both. Of the sixth-grade students taking the ISTEP test, 76 percent passed the ELA testing and 79.2 percent passed the Math portion. About 68.3 percent passed both portions.

Wabash City Schools Superintendent Jason Callahan told the Plain Dealer he was very pleased overall with the ISTEP scores.

“Two of our three schools showed improvement over last year,” he said. “As a school corporation we showed growth.”

Callahan said there was a 2 percent growth in ELA and only a 1 percent loss in Math.

“I’m very excited about the fact that we just implemented the 1-to-1 program this year,” he said. “Each student received either an iPad or MacBook to use.”

He said he was very impressed with the third-grade class because this was also the first year for the IREAD-3 program.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to my principal at O.J. Neighbours, but I can’t help but wonder if that might have had something to do with the ELA scores,” he added.

Sixth, seventh and eighth grades combine to make Wabash Middle School. There was an 80.9 percent pass rate for sixth graders in ELA and 86.2 percent passing in Math. There were 77.7 percent of sixth-grade students who passed both.

Seventh graders turned in a 69.8 percent pass rate in ELA and 75 percent in Math, with a 62.5 percent for both testing portions.

In the eighth grade, 72.2 percent of students passed the ELA and 81.1 percent passed Math. There were 66.7 percent of students that passed both.

Metropolitan School District Superintendent Dr. Sandra Weaver was particularly proud of her schools’ language arts scores.

“MSD obviously put a lot of emphasis on ELA this year,” she said. “As a corporation we tried to focus on literacy and that bore out in our scores.

“I feel math was pretty flat this year, but you have to be able to first read to do math.”

LaFontaine Elementary School’s fifth and sixth graders came in with 76.8 percent of fifth graders passing ELA and 75.6 percent passing Math, while in sixth grade, 83 percent of students passed ELA and 76.1 percent passed Math. 69.5 percent of fifth graders and 71.6 percent of sixth graders passed both.

Northfield Jr.-Sr. High School had 74 percent of seventh grade passing ELA and 72.4 percent of eighth graders passing. Seventh grade Math was passed by 77.9 percent and eighth-grade Math was passed by 76.3 percent. 70.1 percent of seventh graders passed both, while eighth-grade students passing both was at 67.1 percent.

Southwood Jr.-Sr. High School seventh and eighth grade results came in at 76 percent of seventh and 74.4 percent of eighth graders passed ELA; 74.3 percent of seventh and 84.1 percent of eighth graders passed Math. 68.5 percent of seventh graders passed both, while 65.9 percent of eighth graders passed both.

Southwood Elementary School third graders passed ELA at 87.7 percent, fourth grade at 90.2 percent. 79.3 percent of third graders passed Math, while 86.6 percent of fourth graders passed Math. Overall, 76.5 percent of third-grade students passed both as did 70.9 percent of fourth graders.

Of Sharp Creek’s fourth, fifth and sixth graders, 80.2 percent of fourth graders, 75.3 percent of fifth graders, and 75.6 percent of sixth graders passed ELA. 74.4 percent of fourth graders, 83.1 percent of fifth graders, and 76.1 percent of sixth graders passed Math, while 70.9 percent of fourth graders, 70.1 percent of fifth graders and 69.2 percent of sixth graders passed both.

Metro North Elementary School’s third-grade students finished ELA with 86.3 percent passing, and 79.7 percent passing Math. 77.2 percent of students passed both.