Standardized test results gloomy

Presenting results from MAP and NAEP tests, Ector County ISD Superintendent Scott Muri said the results are grim.
MAP stands for Measure of Academic Progress and NAEP stands for National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is the first year ECISD students have taken the MAP and Muri focused on reading and math for both MAP and NAEP. Muri detailed how COVID has impacted students and teachers.
“When we talk about the COVID slide, it’s real and you can see that especially in the area of mathematics,” Muri told the board of trustees during their meeting Tuesday. “It’s a real phenomenon. These data indicate that fourth grade and eighth grade, in fact when we look at it even at every grade level, you can see that it has impacted our students. We also talked about our most fragile population as the most the most significantly impacted and we see that’s true in these data as well.”
As the district moves forward, Muri said as they think about funding at the state level, “we clearly have a crisis that continues to happen in ECISD, as well as across the state.”
“Today, 2.8 million children are physically attending school out of the 5.4 million children in our state, so we’ll have almost half the children in our state that haven’t been to school this year; actually haven’t been to school since March. The slide continues. In ECISD, we hover around 65 percent face-to-face; 35 percent virtual. We continue to see some of those declines happening, and then some of them continue even in the classroom,” Muri said.
He noted that as he goes around the district, teachers are wearing masks and shields and keep their distance. The students can’t share manipulatives.
“… in the classroom, our teachers have a hard time being at their prior best. I think they’re being at their best today, but they’re hindered by the continued presence of this virus and that’s going to continue into the second semester,” Muri said. “I’m very thankful that we are going to have 30 additional days for our elementary kids next summer. That’s going to make a difference. We’ll invest in those kids and create a different experience for them, but this type of learning loss isn’t repaired in a summer or even a semester. This is a multi-year repair opportunity for our kids.”
In August 2021 when school starts, Muri said, they will be serving a different type of child.
“I think about our pre-k kids that have never seen the faces of their teachers, and for the first time next year, they may, if things are different or better, they may get to see their teacher’s face for the very first time,” Muri said. “Those kids have been shaped by a school experience that is very different from what it should be, so we have some work to do academically as a school system to meet these needs of our most fragile children (who) need extra attention, as they always have, but right now the learning loss is just magnified because they’re already fragile so we see that in these data.”
He said that when the Texas Legislature returns in January that the district makes sure dollars are not taken away over the next several years.
Districts lost a lot of money in 2011 that Muri said should have been used to educate kids.
“You can see the results of that. We can’t allow that to happen again, so even though our state is certainly struggling right now we have to make sure that education is the priority when it comes to investing in the well-being of our community,” Muri said.
Muri said this is the first year for the MAP assessment and not all students took it.
“So the data are a little skewed because in some school districts in Texas when this was administered, their students were completely virtual so they chose not to administer the assessment in a virtual environment,” Muri said. “In our system, the principals and teachers did a great job of not only administering face-to-face, but virtual as well. This year’s data from a MAP perspective doesn’t represent the whole of the story because some students in a virtual environment simply did not take it this year.”
STAAR and End of Course exams will be administered this year, but the high stakes such as district and campus accountability won’t be tied to them. Muri said the data will be seen by teachers, families and students, but also the public.
Asked by trustee Donna Smith if standards will be adjusted, Muri said that was the million dollar question.
“The question right now is what does school in 21-22 have to look like because the kids are not going to be the same type of students. A third grader in 2021 is not going to look like any third grader that has ever entered the third grade. They’re going to be different. This virus has affected children. It has affected them academically; it has affected them socially and emotionally, so our job is to create a learning environment that receives those children as they are in August of 2021 and takes them on their academic journey. We will fail as a public school system if we do not change and if we pretend that that third grader is exactly like a third grader has always been. That’s what these people in the room are working on is what must school be in 2021 and beyond to meet the needs of kids … because these data really indicate they’re not going to be the same,” Muri said.
Unfortunately for some children, the slide continues, Muri added.
“It hasn’t been stopped. They’re not having the kind of experience they need; nor are kids. They’re not growing as quickly as we would like them to in an optimal environment. Again, teachers are challenged right now because of the barriers that COVID puts in our way so kids are having the best experiences that they can, but they’re not the kind of experiences that we would be able to provide if we didn’t have to deal with the restrictions,” he said.
While this scenario can appear doom and gloom, Muri said there is a silver lining.
“It represents a pretty incredible opportunity that we have to design around the challenges that we see our kids facing. We cannot have 8 percent of our economically disadvantaged fourth graders be proficient at the end of the year. That just can’t happen,” Muri said.