There are a number of ways to slice and dice school test scores.  At a Tuesday morning work session, the Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board received a look at various testing of students in the district from Assistant Superintendent Matt Kegley.

The report Dr. Kegley presented compared and contrasted HSE testing with the top 41 public school corporations in the state, as measured by the student population.  HSE is the fourth-largest district in Indiana by that measure.

The report was detailed, but here are a few highlights:

–The iRead-3 testing, given only to third-graders, shows HSE second in the state in 2022, although the score dropped slightly compared to 2021.  Zionsville had the highest score in that category among the 41 school districts.

–The iLearn English/Language Arts results showed improvement when measured against the 41 corporations in grades 3-7 and remained the same at grade 8.  The overall score also improved.

–The grades 3-8 iLearn math scores showed improvement in some grades, and some slightly lower by comparison.  The overall score was up slightly.

–Dr. Kegley’s data reveal improvements in every demographic breakdown.  However, he emphasized much work must be done, because even with those improvements, some group scores are much too low.  For example, black student scores in English/Language Arts and Math are both up, but are still low compared to other demographic groups.

–2022 was the first year that all juniors were required to take the SAT exam.  Before, mostly students expecting to enroll in college took that test.  In 2022, HSE had the third-best score among the 41 in reading and writing, with Zionsville and Carmel ahead and Center Grove fourth.  HSE was also third best in SAT math scores.

–Next steps listed by Dr. Kegley include implementing a new literacy curriculum, working with individual school buildings to best understand that building’s scores and talk with elementary and junior high school leaders to put the math scores into context.

You can view the entire data presentation by Dr. Kegley on the test scores at this link.