The State of Indiana released ISTEP data to local school corporations recently, and Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) Schools Assistant Superintendent Jan Combs reviewed highlights of those numbers with the school board Wednesday night.

When breaking down the math, Combs said there are six examples where HSE Schools as a whole saw an increase in test performance, but the entire state’s scores went down.  Examples were English Language Arts among fourth-graders, grade four math, English Language Arts in grade six, Math in grade six and English Language Arts in grade seven as well as Math in grade seven.

There was one example were state scores increased and HSE as a school district went down, and that was in Math for eighth-graders.

Combs cited one area of concern in the ISTEP results for tenth grade students in both Math and English Language Arts – state scores were down, HSE district scores also were down, but the HSE students dropped more than the state.  Administrators are looking at what changes, if any, need to be be made in analyzing these test scores.

Dr. Combs did a deep dive into test performance gaps by analyzing data into racial groups, including white, black, asian, hispanic and multi-racial.  The data shows there continues to be academic gaps among some of the groups, but some are shrinking.  She emphasized that there are still gaps, and there is still work to do in order to further reduce these gaps.

School Superintendent Allen Board performed a demonstration for board members on how new data mining programs can be used to find specific numbers.

Combs reminded board members this will be the final time schools will receive ISTEP test scores.  The next set of results will come from the new ILEARN test.

You can review the ISTEP data shared with the board at this link.