The 2015–2016 school year is half over, and with that milestone passed, officials with the Eastern Regional school district recently updated the board of education on the progress of some long-term goals.
The goals, which were crafted by the district’s advisory committee, include increasing the number of students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes and taking AP exams, increasing test scores in mathematics for students with learning disabilities and improving Eastern’s daily average attendance to meet the state standard.
AP classes and exams
Regarding AP classes and tests, district director of curriculum, instruction and professional development Robert Cloutier said Eastern has been trying to increase the number students enrolled in AP classes for several years, and the trend upward was strong.
For the 2013–2014 school year, Cloutier said the school had 680 students enrolled in AP courses, and for this year the number was up to 894.
“It’s an over 200 student increase in our AP courses over three years, primarily because our students spoke to other students and our teachers support our students, and so the trend has just skyrocketed over the last three years,” Cloutier said.
Although students have yet to take AP exams this year, Cloutier said there was a 130-student increase from the 506 students tested in 2013–2014 to the 636 students tested in the 2014–2015 school year.
Daily attendance
For the district’s daily attendance goal, Eastern Principal Robert Tull said the school was working to raise last year’s daily attendance rate of 94 percent to meet the state average of 96 percent. Tull said it wasn’t yet possible to tell if the district would hit the goal this year, as school will still be in session for another four months, but he did say the district would have achieved the goal last year had it not been for the month of June.
To increase attendance, Tull said the district now mails letters to parents on students’ fourth, eighth and 12th absences, and then the district will also meet with chronically absent students to discuss the issue.
Students in jeopardy of failing because of their attendance would then also have to appear before an attendance appeals committee, although no case has warranted such action yet.
“We haven’t gotten to that point yet, but we know we have a few more months to go, and we do have some students that do have difficulty in getting to school, and those will be the ones we will be focusing on,” Tull said.
Learning-disabled math scores
Eastern director of special services Susan Roth said the district is also making progress in its goal of increasing the math scores of students with learning disabilities, specifically on the now annual Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers standardized test.
Roth said the number of students with disabilities who took PARCC was small, so it is hard to determine the performance of special education students based on those numbers alone, but PARCC did supply the district with some “good data” to identify strengths and weaknesses.
As such, Roth said the district’s math and special education departments have been working together on the issue.
“Some of the math teachers have gone out to workshops to help our students learn how to analyze and identify PARCC problems and how to understand the format, and some of that’s being practiced in our math format,” Roth said.
Roth also noted the new bell schedule to be implemented next school year will also allow those students with learning disabilities more time for supplemental math instruction.
