Data Analysis Project
Standardized Test Scores: Past Three Years
EDL/520
Professor Lauren Laundis
July 7, 2014
Jonna Ledyard
Introduction
There are so many things that teachers and staff are asked to remember and data is no different. They should be aware of their schools strengths and weaknesses, so they know what areas need to be focused on more. This allows teachers to come up with strategies for the weak areas. The community needs to be informed as well, so finding ways to expose the results is very important.
Specific Areas of Students' Strengths
STAAR testing for 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 grades have shown improvement over the past three years in the mathematics section.
- 4 & 6 grades shows improvement in reading.
- 4 & 7 grades shows improvement or stayed the same in writing.
Specific Areas of Students' Weaknesses
- 7 grade needs improvement in mathematics.
- 3, 5, 7, and 8 grade needs improvement in reading.
- 8 grade needs improvement in science and social studies.
Strategies for Schools Strengths
The school's strengths were reading and writing. A great way to help students keep scores up while trying to raise 7th grade mathematics , 3rd, 5th, 7, and 8th grade in reading, and 8th g grade in social studies teachers could use extrinsic motivation.
Strategies for Schools Weaknesses
Reading and writing are the areas in the school that need the most improvement. Teachers need to focus heavily on their students different learning styles/strategies because students have a hard time reading and writing. Reading to some students can be very stressful and overwhelming. They need to be taught how to "chunk" information, underline what they need. For writing they need to taught the writing process, how to make an outline, and how to summarize the information read.
Recommendations for Presenting Data to the Community
There are a couple of ways data can be presented to the community. Parent/Teacher conferences would be a way to share their child's test results. School email could be another options to get information to parents and community fast and easy. A sign or banner coming in from the Department of Education seeing how the school did. Schools website could be another way to share the information.
Conclusion
After looking over the test scores for the past three years it has went up and down, but would have to say 2013-2014 there was improvement in all areas with exception of a few. Strengths and weaknesses of the school were looked at as well as how to improve the weakest scores to raise them up. Also discussed was how to get the information out to the community because they are interested in how schools are doing.
References
- TEA Department of Education. (2007-2014). Testing/Accountability. Retrieved by http://www.tea.state.tx.us/news_release.aspx?id=25769811685