Baker board OKs contract with Calif. firm for LEAP test aid

• By CHUCK HUSTMYRE
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: May 8, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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BAKER — The Baker School Board agreed Tuesday to contract with a California firm to assist teachers in preparing for next year’s state accountability tests.

School Superintendent Chris Bowman announced the scores for the most recent LEAP tests and Graduate Exit Exam tests at Tuesday’s meeting, and the results for Baker were about as bad as they could get.

Louisiana Department of Education data show Baker’s fourth-grade students who took the LEAP test for the first time scored last in the state on the standardized tests given annually to all fourth- and eighth-grade students.

Eighth-graders taking the test for the first time scored seventh from the bottom on the list of the state’s 72 school systems.

When students repeating the test were factored in, fourth-graders edged up two percentage points, with 44 percent getting a passing score compared with only 42 percent of those taking the test for the first time.

Eighth-graders, however, scored even worse when both first-time and repeat test takers’ scores were calculated, dropping from a first-time pass rate of 49 percent to 46 percent for all test takers.

Statewide passing averages were: 76 percent for first-time fourth-graders, 75 percent for all fourth-grade test takers; 69 percent for eighth-grade first-timers, and 66 percent for all eighth-grade students.

“If this doesn’t portend for us a sense of urgency and a need for change, I don’t know what does,” Bowman said after the meeting. “The staff and I are working on solutions — both short- and long-term.”

Something that might help, Bowman said, is the one-year, $34,500  contract with Scantron Corp. of Irvine, Calif., to provide student performance and achievement testing and evaluation next year before the LEAP test. Testing would be done at the beginning of the year and later in the fall using LEAP-type questions, Bowman said. The testing would give teachers an accurate idea of student strengths and weaknesses prior to the statewide test.

“Before they take the LEAP test, we would have an idea what they’re doing and a way to adequately prepare them,” Bowman told board members before the vote.

The one-year contract will cost the School Board $34,500.

Bowman said poverty plays a big factor in student performance and test scores. “We have a lot of kids who are poor, but that’s no excuse,” he said. “We need to take a long look at how we do things and how we instruct people.”