Today the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) released statewide testing data from last spring, covering the 2023-24 school year. While the statewide story is pretty discouraging, the data for Cascade School District is more encouraging, showing higher achievement and more growth from year-to-year than the state average. The investments we’ve made in teaching practices and curriculum adoption over the last several years are paying off.
While testing isn’t popular with everyone, it does offer a way to measure the health of the school system. These tests on the basics of English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science let us know how we are doing in our mission of educating students. The Federal Government expects participation rates of at least 95%, because anything less doesn’t give an accurate picture of the whole system. Cascade School district exceeded this in every category, while the state average participation rate was considerably below the 95% threshold.
Cascade was already in a good place, and the results from last year show that we keep getting better at a faster rate than the rest of the state, as you can see in this graph:
In English Language Arts, 52.4% of Cascade students met or exceeded grade level standards. That is a 3.4% improvement over last year, and a significant 9.9% higher than the state average. Our 11th grade students improved a whopping 12.3%, and Turner Elementary improved 5.4%.
In Mathematics, 36.9% of Cascade students met or exceeded grade level standards. While this number is lower than we want, it does show a 5.7% improvement over last year, and is 5.9% higher than the state average. Cloverdale Elementary led the way with 9.6% improvement over last year.
Finally, in Science 29.4% of Cascade students met or exceeded grade level standards. This is a 3.7% improvement over last year, and roughly equivalent to the state average of 29.3%.
Our goal is to keep improving at helping our students succeed. These results show that the work we are doing to collaborate as teachers and implement our curriculum are giving our students measurable improvement.
You can see the results for Cascade and the entire state at this link on the ODE website.