Bright Education Services & Testing

Georgia's Savannah Christian Preparatory School has several reasons to celebrate, the Savannah Morning News reported. In addition to high test scores and national recognition, the institution is celebrating its 60th year of educating local children.

According to the news source, Savannah was established in 1951 as the Evangelical Bible Institute, a boarding school for eight children. Throughout the School's 60-year history, much has changed, except for the institution's commitment to its Christian roots.

Today, more than 1,000 students attend preschool, elementary and high school at the institution, the news outlet stated. Recently, the elementary pupils' performance on the math and reading portions of the Stanford Achievement Test helped Savannah become a National Blue Ribbon School.

Pearson Education developed the Stanford Achievement Test to help administrators gauge students' academic abilities, according to the company's website. Meanwhile, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program was designed by the U.S. Department of Education to honor institutions that have raised their level of academic performance.

The news source reported that Savannah students' math and reading scores on the Test managed to place the school in the nation's top 15th percentile.

The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) is provided by the University of Iowa's College of Education and is used to measure student progress in kindergarten through the eighth grade, according to the institution's website. Even though the assessment is designed for pupils within the state of Iowa, school districts across the U.S. are able to administer this voluntary test.

Saint Gabriel School in Windsor, Connecticut, is a private institution that administered the ITBS to its students, The Hartford Courant reported. These pupils did so well on the assessment that they will be recognized as a 2011 Blue Ribbon School for academic excellence by the U.S. Department of Education.

In order to receive the designation as a Blue Ribbon School, students must have taken the ITBS and scored within the 85th percentile, the news source stated. Pupils at Saint Gabriel managed to surpass this criteria and placed in the 90th percentile. Patricia Martin, the School's principal, credits the high scores to her institution's educators, who provide a customized approach to teaching that takes students' strengths and weaknesses into account.

"Saint Gabriel achieves excellence quietly, but very effectively as evidenced by this distinguished recognition," Dale R. Hoyt, the superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Hartford, told the news outlet.  

The Center on Education Policy recently released the results of a survey it conducted among districts in each of the 44 states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) between February and April of 2011. Findings provide a sense of schools' progress as they implement the changes to their curricula.

According to the CCSS' website, the initiative is designed to define what knowledge and skills students should acquire over the course of their academic careers. Based on the results of the survey, 57 percent of respondents feel that the English and math standards are more rigorous than those they are meant to replace.

Furthermore, many survey participants reported that they anticipate little resistance to the more rigorous standards from educators and members of their communities. This is good news for the 66 percent of school districts that are currently developing comprehensive plans and time lines for the implementation of the CCSS. Meanwhile, 61 percent of respondents are purchasing or plan to acquire materials that will align with their new curricula.

To help teachers prepare for the transition to the new standards, 48 percent of school districts also plan to provide opportunities for professional development.

Students at Butler Elementary School in Iowa will be greeted by several changes when they resume classes for the new school year, including more classmates and classrooms, The Messenger reported.

The closing of Hillcrest Elementary School in Fort Dodge is the reason behind Butler's larger student population, according to the news source. The institution accepted all of Hillcrest's pupils, as well as other learners from the district. As a result, there are now more than 460 pupils at Butler.

To accommodate all of these students, Butler has extended its facility to include four new classrooms, the news outlet reported. In addition, four Hillcrest teachers have transitioned to Butler, where instructors now meet for 40 minutes each day to discuss their students' progress.

As a result of the school's physical and academic changes, students' test scores have increased, especially in the areas of math and reading, the news source reported. Butler now boasts 82 percent proficiency in reading, which is above the 40th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS).

This assessment is designed by the University of Iowa College of Education to test the abilities of students in kindergarten through the eighth grade, according to the institution's website.

The University of Iowa's College of Education provides schools throughout the state with an opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of their teaching through the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS). According to the institution's website, this assessment is provided to students in kindergarten through the eighth grade.

Irving Elementary School in Waterloo, Iowa is one institution that has taken steps to improve the quality of its academic programs, and, as a result, its students' progress, the Waterloo Daily Courier reported.

Changes at Irving began with the new school year on August 8, according to the news source. Now, students have the option of entering their classrooms at 8:15 a.m., which is 35 minutes before the official start of the school day. For teachers, having pupils in their seats early provides a chance to go over objectives and goals. This early classroom time also offers students a chance to complete homework assignments that may have been neglected the night before.

"It's just an extra layer of support," Frederick Zimmerman, a fifth-grade teacher at Irving, told the news source. "Give me a month. You'll see the progress."

Zimmerman added that the early classroom time helps ensure that students are engaged when the day officially begins.

Although the Clawson School District in Michigan recently met the state's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), officials feel there is still room for improvement, which the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative may be able to help fast track, Clawson Patch reported.

Results that were released by the Michigan Department of Education show that Clawson Middle School, Schalm Elementary and Kenwood Elementary schools all received an A, while Clawson High School was given a B, according to the news source. However, despite the fact that the institutions met the state's AYP standards, students did not meet the goals that were established for elementary and middle school reading.

Michigan is currently in the process of adopting the CCSS, which Jan Ellis, a spokesperson for the state's Department of Education, told the news outlet will establish specific academic goals for the district's students.

"We want to raise the rigor of what students know, rather than lower the bar," Ellis told the news source.

According to the CCSS' website, Michigan adopted the initiative on June 15, 2010. 

The majority of K-8 students in the state of Iowa participate in the Iowa Statewide Testing Program and take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), according to the website for The University of Iowa, the institution that administers the assessment.

In the North Winneshiek School, educators set specific goals with each student and emphasized the importance of doing well on the assessment, The Decorah Newspapers reported.

The No Child Left Behind Act states that students who achieve ITBS scores within the 41st to 99th percentile for reading comprehension, mathematics total and science are considered to be proficient, according to the news source. However, any pupils who score below this range are not.

In North Winneshiek, ITBS results revealed that students in grades three through eight performed the strongest in science, the news outlet reported, with mathematics and reading their next best subjects, respectively.

While Tim Dugger, the superintendent of the school, was quoted by the news source as saying that it gets harder for institutions to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP) each year, the school managed to meet its AYP goals across several key areas. For instance, 84 percent of fifth graders were found to be proficient in reading. 

When Colorado school officials decided that it was time to update their curriculum, they chose to adopt the Common Core State Standards, according to Coloradoan. Melissa Colsman, director of teaching and learning for the state Department of Education, said that ultimately, they were searching for "fewer, clearer, higher standards."

According to its website, the Common Core State Standards is a national curriculum for mathematics and English language arts. One of its goals is to give students modern technology skills. However, it also aims to prepare high school graduates for college or the workforce.

Colsman said that this is an important part of the standards and she plans to implement this in the new state curriculum as well.

"We now have a seamless articulation of expectations from preschool to postsecondary education," she told the news source.

Colorado schools will begin to use the Common Core State Standards, in addition to their state-created curriculum, in the upcoming school year. At this time, students can expect to see a new transitional standardized testing system as well as a unique classroom learning school, the news outlet reports. 

The Common Core State Standards mandates that in order to be prepared for college or the workforce, students must be able to "use technology and digital media strategically and capably." In order to comply with this new national curriculum, many schools across the country are searching for ways to integrate technology into their classrooms.

The Mendon, Illinois Community Unit School District No. 4 (CUSD #4) is doing so by providing freshman and sophomore students with Apple laptops in order to enhance their understanding of mathematics and English language arts. Using these computers, students will have access to educational programs that are in line with the Common Core State Standards.

District Superintendent Diane Robertson believes this is a step in the right direction.

"Today marks a paradigm shift for CUSD #4," she said. "The incredible advancements in technology have now made it possible for us to offer our students their own personalized learning paths to prepare them for success in school and in life."

Robertson added that this project also provides equality in the district, as it gives electronics to students who may not have access to such technology at home.

Officials from Challenger School, a private institution in Utah, recently announced that this year, its students received the highest scores on their Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in the school's history.

Their 2011 test results indicated that the school's kindergarten students scored in the 96th percentile, meaning that they had better results than 96 percent of the other children who took the assessment. Additionally, the eighth-grade students were placed in the 98th percentile, scoring higher than 98 percent of other eighth-grade pupils who took the ITBS.

Even when Challenger School children were compared to other private schools exclusively, as opposed to all institutions that administer the assessment, officials said the students still performed much better than average.

While the results of this year's ITBS scores were particularly high, Barbara Baker, chief executive officer and founder of the school, said that the pupils have always received good results.

“Challenger students have always performed extraordinarily well on national standardized tests, consistently averaging in the top 10 percent nationally," Baker said. "We’re proud of that record and are committed to maintaining it." 

According to the Common Core State Standards' website, more than 40 states have already adopted the system that aims to ensure that students across the country are exposed to the same curriculum. This has prompted discussion from educators about whether or not this is actually a good thing for the nation's youth.

While some individuals oppose federal intervention in state schools, other professionals, such as Richard Riley, maintain that the Common Core State Standards is a good thing for the schools that use it, VOA News reports.

Riley, former education secretary to President Bill Clinton, said that it is important to remember that adopting the standards is not mandatory, according to the media outlet. States that have decided to use the Common Core State Standards have done so voluntarily. However, he said that based on his experience he believes that the national system is necessary. When states were asked to create their own standards in the 1990s, some areas had stronger requirements than others. This created a discrepancy in the capabilities of children in different states, he said.

Standardized tests like the SAT-10 are typically calculated electronically, but the corrections are not done at the testing site. Several school districts in the state of New York recently made history for using the first ever electronic scoring system that was on-site.

The Educational Assessment Scoring Environment (EASE) was created by the Education Division of Optimum Solutions Corporation, and was designed to use the same data capture technology that was used by the U.S. Census Bureau during their 2010 survey.

Company officials suggest that this invention will be beneficial to school districts, as it will allow their staff to determine the students' scores.

"These school districts are pointing the way to the future for all schools throughout the state and, indeed, the country," said John Harrison, executive vice president of the company. "While other states have certainly implemented electronic scoring in their standardized test data collection, none have been able, until today, to offer the EASE suite of applications that provides a totally customizable scanning, closed end processing and constructed response scoring solution."

As part of education reform, many schools are choosing to evaluate their teachers' pay based on how well students perform on standardized tests.

The media is beginning to uncover how some schools matched up to others in terms of student testing, causing some educators to criticize being portrayed as either good or bad from test scores alone, according to the Los Angeles Times.

After the Times published an analytical piece about STAR Testing scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District, some administrators and union leaders said that it was an unfair portrayal of educators.

Some critics have suggested that standardized test scores alone should not be the go-to for determining teacher pay, as there could be other reasons for student performance.

According to the Times Record Online, there are other factors for student test performance other than teachers. These factors include relationships with other teachers, the students' home environment, parental support and mobility to and from school can all be reasons for how a pupil performs on a standardized test.

It's become a requirement for public schools to assess how well their students perform when compared to the rest of the country. Through the No Child Left Behind Act, schools must choose a form of standardized testing to determine exactly where their students measure up.

However, although some private schools in Pennsylvania are opting out of taking tests, some Catholic schools and other private institutions are choosing to take the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10), according to the Bucks County Courier Times.

The news provider reports that these institutions are finding that they're attracting parents who are concerned that public school systems spend too much time in their curriculum focusing on prepping students for performing on standardized tests.

The SAT 10 is available to children throughout their academic careers ranging from kindergarten to high school, and tests them in reading comprehension, science and mathematics. Test takers must complete the test using multiple choice, short answers and extended responses.

Some schools across the country are using standardized test scores in order to get recognition from the government. However, a number of analysts suggests that standardized tests had become too predictable for some, which is why New York state decided to make math and English tests more difficult.

Now that proficiency has dropped, The New York Times reports that this may not be due simply to the fact that the tests are harder than before, but rather that there are flaws within the new system. Some analysts believe that because there has been such stress upon teachers to have well-performing students, they've simply been teaching pupils the exam material.

"They just kept upping the stakes with the scores, putting more pressure on the schools but not really looking at what it all means," Pedro Noguera, an education professor at New York University who has worked with the city's Department of Education to help improve struggling schools, told the news provider.

The news source suggests that because these standardized tests had been in place for a number of years, they became too predictable, and now many feel as though they've been thrown a curveball with the new exams.