This isn't bad news, this is new news. We still have students that are working very hard. We still have great teachers that are working very hard. We have great schools that are doing good things. But what we've done is we've raised the bar and we've changed the expectation. – Judy Park, associate superintendent of the State Office of Education
Editor's note: We've compiled all of the SAGE rankings alphabetically for Utah schools in one table. Click here to view the table.
SALT LAKE CITY — The bar has been raised, and fewer than half of Utah's students are clearing it.
The Utah State Office of Education released Monday the first results of a new year-end testing system, known as SAGE, used to measure student proficiency in English language arts, math and science.
Educators are calling college and career readiness the new standard of proficiency, and the results show the majority of students in third through 11th grade aren't ready for what lies ahead.
Statewide, about 42 percent of students scored proficiently in language arts, almost 39 percent scored proficiently in math, and nearly 44 percent were proficient in science.
In particular, language arts was most challenging for Utah's ninth-graders, about 40 percent of whom scored proficiently. Math scores were lowest for high schoolers taking second-level secondary math, with just more than ¼ of them scoring proficiently. High school biology scored lowest among science assessments at about 38 percent proficient.
The results were not entirely unforseen, and state officials said that looking forward, they're only a snapshot from a new lens.
"This isn't bad news, this is new news," said Judy Park, associate superintendent of the State Office of Education. "We still have students that are working very hard. We still have great teachers that are working very hard. We have great schools that are doing good things. But what we've done is we've raised the bar and we've changed the expectation."
When averaged, scores from the Ogden School District were the lowest among Utah's public school districts, scoring about 28 percent, 20 percent and 27 percent proficient in language arts, math and science respectively.
The Cache County School District's scores, when averaged, were the highest among public school districts in the state, with about 57 percent of students proficient in language arts and math, and about 59 percent proficient in science.
The test
SAGE is aligned with Utah's Common Core Standards, which outline the minimum skills in math and English that students in the state are expected to master. The standards were adopted in 2010 as part of an initiative to better equip students with skills needed beyond high school.
But state officials say this year's SAGE results are not an indictment of the Common Core.
"It doesn't mean the student is less capable. It means our expectations have changed," Park said. "We get those expectations from colleges and universities and post-high school experiences. … We want to make sure that a Utah high school graduate is prepared to compete with a graduate from Massachusetts, with a graduate from Finland, with a graduate from anywhere else in the world."
SAGE has sparked controversy among some parents not only because of its alignment with the Common Core, but also because the computer-adaptive exam molds itself to a child's individual skill level. Unlike previous assessments, SAGE uses mostly questions without multiple-choice answers, asking the child to formulate the correct answer in an interactive portal.
The test includes two 60-minute writing prompts that are graded on focus, organization, elaboration and editing. The writing prompts form part of the language arts assessment.
The test currently has a bank of 11,783 questions that were each approved by committees comprised of educators, parents and other stakeholders. While science is part of the new, more rigorous testing system, the standards for science are not included in the Common Core and were not raised with the implementation of SAGE.
SAGE is designed to facilitate data-driven learning in classrooms, giving teachers quantifiable information to make improvements and replicate success. Results from the year-end assessment are used in addition to results from a mid-year interim exam, as well as more frequent formative tests or assignments, which are also part of the SAGE system.
Utah is one of a small handful of states that have already administered similar assessments. By the end of 2015, all 50 states will be required to move to Common Core-based assessments, many of them computer adaptive.
Interpreting results
Since the test was administered in spring, some educators have been critical of the slow rollout of the tests scores, especially since computerized tests are capable of delivering results much faster than conventional tests. SAGE has always had the capacity to immediately deliver raw data. But state officials say establishing context for this and future assessments necessitated a delay in the process.
"That's what we spent the entire summer doing was preparing the data and determining in this standard-setting process what score you need (to get) to be considered proficient," Park said.
In future tests, raw data for individual students will be immediately available to students and teachers. Statewide aggregates will be released after all schools have administered the test, which takes place over the course of about two months, according to Jo Ellen Shaeffer, director of assessment and accountability at the State Office of Education.
In many schools and districts, teachers form teams or committees to analyze data from yearly, interim and formative SAGE assessments and use it to guide instruction.
"Teachers can look at the test scores in aggregate in their own classes and work with other teachers around professional development and curriculum," Shaeffer said. "(The year-end assessment) is one of many data points that teachers look at to know where kids are at."
Aggregate results of the SAGE test are available to the public online at state, district, school and grade levels. Shaeffer says teachers will likely meet with parents individually to help them interpret their child's scores, which are classified as either below proficient, approaching proficient, proficient or highly proficient. Relative strengths and weaknesses are identified in each category.
Looking forward
While SAGE will play a large role in determining long-term academic objectives for the state, being able to draw comparisons will require more than one year's results, according to Shaeffer.
"The best predictor of future performance is past performance, which we do not have yet as this is the first year of the assessment," she said. "I think as teachers become more familiar with the Core and students become more familiar with taking that type of a test, you'll see those gains improve."
As for specific year-by-year objectives, Shaeffer says it's too early to tell. Comparing SAGE to previous annual exams, such as Utah's criterion-reference test, yields little insight because of different assessment styles.
But based on what other states have experienced in their initial yearly assessments, Utah officials are hoping to see "modest gains" in student performance within the first few years, Shaeffer said.
"It's going to take us a few years, I think at least two years, to be able to predict what will happen in the future because this is only the very first time," she said. "And any predictions are just that — predictions — because we do not have enough information yet."
An aggregate of each school's 2014 proficiency scores will be used in federal and state accountability reporting. That includes the PACE report card, which will be issued by the Governor's Office in December. SAGE growth, however, will not appear on the report until next year's results are available.
While 2014's SAGE results identify widespread shortfalls under the new standard, Park says they establish a starting ground on which to build a new culture of academic achievement at classroom and institutional levels.
"This is the baseline here. This is a great opportunity. This is our new reality," she said. "If everyone will now focus on moving forward, we're absolutely confident that you're going to see these results improve over time."
Email: mjacobsen@deseretnews.com, Twitter: MorganEJacobsen