Granite School District's top students outscored their peers in college acceptance and advanced placement tests again this year, but students at grades five and eight dropped in their scores in the current round of statewide achievement testing.
At the eighth grade, the composite score on the Stanford Achievement Test dropped from the 50th percentile (the national midpoint) to the 48th percentile. The fifth-graders dropped from the 52nd percentile posted in 1993 to the 50th percentile. Eleventh-graders remained the same as last year at 55 - five points above the national norm.Darryl Thomas, district assessment specialist, told the Granite board that the slippage at grades five and eight represented only a few questions on the battery of tests administered.
Board member Patricia Sand-strom said she was concerned at the continued low scoring in the English/language categories. At all testing levels, the Granite students were below the national norm, with fifth-graders at the 45th percentile; eighth-graders at the 41st percentile (a drop of 4 percentile points since last year); and 11th-graders at the 45th percentile.
"What's happening? Are we pushing math and science and letting down in English?" said Sandstrom, an English teacher in the Jordan District.
Thomas noted that Utah as a whole has its lowest scores in the English/language area but acknowledged that more attention should be paid to teaching children grammar, spelling, punctuation and the other basic elements of English.
On the 1993 American College Testing scores, Granite had more students take the tests, with a higher average score, than either the nation or state. The Granite average composite score was 21.3; the national score 20.7; and the state score 21.1, he said.
"These results are truly exceptional when the large number of students who participated in the program is considered." Approximately 70 percent of the graduating class of 1993 took the ACT test.