A group of students study vocabulary Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, at the start of their English class at Pendleton High School.

PENDLETON — Oregon Statewide Assessment System scores reflect the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic on student learning in local schools as well as continued efforts to increase student participation.

The Oregon Department of Education released the scores Wednesday, Sept. 20, for the 2022-23 school year. The scores varied throughout Eastern Oregon districts, with scores tending to be higher in districts with more participation, InterMountain Education Service District Superintendent Mark Mulvihill said.

Participation plays an important role in the validity of the test scores, but is complicated in Oregon. Summative testing is a federal requirement, according to a media presentation by the Oregon Department of Education, with a required participation rate of 95%. Oregon considers test results with less than 80% participation as invalid.

However, students in Oregon are allowed to opt out of testing in English language arts and mathematics. Mulvihill said this leads to incomplete data sets, making it difficult for the tests to inform decisions at a district and state level as intended.

Andrea Lockard, Oregon Department of Education director of assessment and student reporting, said in the presentation that test participation was close to 95% statewide before the coronavirus pandemic. Testing was halted in 2020 due to the pandemic and shortened with minimal participation in 2021. Since then participation has improved and is near past participation levels, with rates between 84% and 88% across the the three subjects.

Pendleton participation a tale of grade levels

For the Pendleton School District, Matt Yoshioka, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, said only grades three through eight achieved the 80% participation standard. At the high school level, ODE data shows participation close to 60% in English language arts and math and 93% for science.

The data shows participation rates above 90% in all subjects for all grades below high school in the Pendleton School District.

Yoshioka said passing the standardized tests in math and science once was a requirement for graduation, but the state made this optional a few years ago. Making the test optional, then, took away student motivation to take the exam.

“It’s difficult for us to meet that expectation of participation when the state has passed a bill that says it’s optional,” he said.

In grades three through eight, Yoshioka said the scores were mixed compared to the state average. He said a highlight of the data is sixth, seventh and eighth graders all performed above state average in English language arts.

He said the test scores also reflect areas where students lost learning time during the coronavirus pandemic. Based on the results, Yoshioka said math is the most impacted subject area at this time, as well as language arts at the lower grade levels.

ODE data shows 29% of third and fourth grade students passed the English language arts exam at a level three or four. Grade levels five through eight had a passing rate between 45% and 49%.

Yoshioka said over the next couple weeks, staff will look at each individual school and see if any are performing a little higher than others. If so, he said they will look into what can be replicated in other schools.

Umatilla schools focus on different testing model

The Pendleton School District is not the only one seeing an impact from learning disruption during the pandemic. Heidi Sipe, superintendent for the Umatilla School District, said third graders in her district also are underperforming on tests.

Sipe said the district offers the OSAS tests due to the requirement, but the district focuses on a different testing model, known as the Measures of Academic Progress Growth assessment, to monitor student growth. Because the district puts focus on the MAP Growth assessment, she said state test scores tend to be lower.

With the MAP Growth system, she said the 50th percentile is the average performance for students. However, she said third grade students were in the 25th percentile last year for English language arts, and 29th percentile for math last year.

“That little third grade group is definitely very impacted by COVID,” Sipe said.

Going into this year, Sipe said the district added additional support and intervention curriculum, and provided additional training for teachers and paraprofessionals.

Hermiston stays near state average

Hermiston schools scored close to the state average, according to a press release from the Hermiston School District.

Overall student proficiency across all tested grade levels, district test scores decreased 0.7% in English language arts, increased 0.8% in math, and increased 0.5% in science from the previous year.

Most grade levels had rates close to the state average, with scores in the 30% to 40% range.

Third graders strayed farthest from the state average, scoring 31% in English language arts and 32% in math. State averages are 39.4% and 39.7% respectively.

With the exception of eighth grade, all other grade levels performed between 41% and 49% in English language arts, within 3% of the state average. Eighth graders had a score of 38%, compared to the state average of 41%, in English language arts.

In math, eighth grade students scored 14%, notably below the state average of 25%. In science students scored 19.8%, which is below the state average of 26%.

High school students performed close to the state average in English language arts, scoring 45%. In math, students scored 16%, which is below the state average of 20%.

All grade levels in Hermiston had participation rated above 80%, with most having over 90% participation.

“The results demonstrate that the initiatives put in place over the last few years are making a positive difference in student learning outcomes,” according to Hermiston schools superintendent Tricia Mooney, “creating even more excitement around the initiative and refinement work being put in place over the coming school years.”

‘Check the oil’ in schoolMulvihill and Yoshioka emphasized the OSAS test scores are just one indicator of the success of a district. Yoshioka said the graduation rates for the district are a better indicator of the district’s success, explaining the ultimate goal of schools is to help students graduate and be set up for success after high school.

To Mulvihill, the test scores still are valuable, but are just one of many ways to “check the oil” in schools. He said schools are in a transitional period, figuring out how much emphasis should be placed on state testing in a post-coronavirus pandemic world.

Standardized tests no longer have the same emphasis they did during the days of No Child Left Behind, Mulvihill said. Other performance-driven indicators are being used in measuring the success of schools, like graduation rates, attendance and satisfaction surveys.

“I think we’re heading in, I hope we’re heading in,” he said, “a direction where it is simply an indicator to check the oil on how your kids are performing on a certain day, compared to their peers.”