KLSD: Board presented with district profile

By JEFF MORRIS

At the Jan. 30 Katonah-Lewisboro School District Board of Education meeting, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Julia Drake, presented the board with the annual district profile, which included an explanation of 2024 state achievement data and testing results.

Drake said that achievement test data would be used to inform both future and current decision making. Superintendent Raymond Blanch noted that comparisons in the report were made to the group of 18 school districts that make up Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES. He also pointed out that regents exams were becoming less important going forward, as they are no longer going to be a requirement and the state has identified other pathways to graduation.

“In rankings, we have to be very careful with those,” said Blanch. “The rankings could be literally 1 or 2 percentage points between somebody who’s at 3 or 4.”

In ELA grades 3-5, math grades 3-5, and science grade 8, Drake said the district was doing quite well in comparison with BOCES. She said overall in both elementary and middle school results, there was “a nice increase” in math performance and ELA level performance.

“Remember, this was the first shift to computer-based testing in grades three to eight,” she noted. “That’s a significant shift and one might expect a dip, and we prevailed despite that.”

One area in which the district had higher percentages than the BOCES average in 2024 was a subject of considerable questioning from board members: the number of students opting out of tests. In grades 3-5, 9.6 percent of students opted out of ELA testing; 8.6 percent opted out of math; and 14 percent opted out of science. In grades 6-8, 8.3 percent opted out of ELA; 13.4 percent opted out of math, and 33 percent opted out of science. The average BOCES opt-out rate was lower for all those assessments.

Drake explained that the opt-out movement began when the Common Core curriculum came out and it was seen as a way of resisting high-stakes testing from the state and protesting that effort. “It’s kind of petered away a little bit,” she said. “I always would tell families, and I’m sure the principals do the same, this is one of the measures that we use to also help provide academic intervention services if a child needs it. So if you opt out of this test, you might be putting your child at a disadvantage from receiving further help.” She added it is a tool that is used to help inform their practice, so if many people are opting out, they will not necessarily be able to make the most informed decisions.

Part of the reason the grade eight science opt-out number was so high, Drake noted, was that last year there was a separate earth science assessment, and the test has changed, so the number got skewed. “That will change this current year; everybody’s taking it,” said Drake. “We’re hoping we’ll see a smaller number this year.”

Middle school scores were again higher than the BOCES average, with the exception of math 7, where the scores were equivalent.

Drake highlighted John Jay High School numbers showing that 96 percent of students enrolled in college immediately after high school and returned for a second year, and 82 percent of students from 2018 completed a college degree within six years of JJHS graduation, compared with a national average of 62 percent.

Trustee Marjorie Schiff pointed out that graphs included in the presentation about regents exams could be misleading, in that they implied that many students had scored in the neighborhood of 90 percent on various regents. In fact, what they showed was the percentage of students who had passed the exams. Those numbers were again higher across the board than the BOCES average, with the exception of the Living Environment Science Regents, which was taken by less than 15 students.

A JJHS area Drake wanted to call particular attention to was advanced placement courses, of which the district offered 23 last year. She reported that the school was a platinum award winner, with 82 percent of students taking one or more AP courses before graduating; 71 percent earning an AP exam score of 3 or higher; and 29 percent taking five or more AP courses with at least one taken in ninth or 10th grade. There were 95 students named AP Scholars, receiving scores of 3 or higher on three or more AP exams; 35 AP Scholars with Honor, who received an average score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams taken, and scores of 3 or higher on four or more of these exams; and 58 AP Scholars with Distinction, receive an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken, and scores of 3 or higher on five or more of these exams.

A second AP award Drake wanted highlighted was the AP Access Award, which she said is presented to schools “when the percentage of underrepresented and/or low-income students accessing the school’s AP program is the same as or greater than the percentage in the school’s graduating class.”

In 2024, according to the presentation, a record number of JJHS students took AP classes and more students scored 3 or higher on AP exams than in years past.

Blanch said he and JJHS principal Steven Siciliano had been exploring “AP for All.” “We’re more than likely looking at a kind of AP for All for all 10th graders,” he said, with an AP seminar course something they’ll be looking at in March as part of the district’s 2030 plan. Drake added that a pre-AP “Bio for All” is coming in the fall.