Before Yelm Community Schools Director of Assessment Kurt Fourre’s annual student assessment update to the school board, Superintendent Chris Woods said the Thursday, Feb. 27, presentation would be “probably more relevant than it’s ever been.”
Fourre showed the board and community members in attendance district benchmark academic assessments in math and English from the fall and winter semesters, as well as results from social, emotional, behavioral and belonging surveys, among other data.
Woods said the data is important as the district has been “beat up quite a bit” in social media in the weeks leading up to the levy election due to test scores and graduation rates. But, according to the second-year superintendent, those factors are only two pieces of the puzzle that define a school district’s success.
“For some people, that is their measure of school success. We will tell you that that is one measure on one day of our success,” Woods said. “It is not the complete picture of how our students are doing, and if you have this conversation with any school district across the state and across the country, they will tell you this is one measure we use to determine how we’re doing. It is not the only measure we use.”
Fourre began the presentation by noting that this year’s data “isn’t significantly different” when compared to previous years. He added that circumstances have impacted learning, including larger class sizes, fewer support staff and paraeducators and lack of instructional coaching resources, among others.
In the kindergarten literacy test known as DIBELS, or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, students showed a significant growth from fall to winter, with 18% of students meeting benchmark standards in the fall to 36% in the winter. Fourre noted that the averages in the bar charts often hide outliers, including schools that saw much more significant increases in percentage from fall to winter.
Literacy scores in first grade dropped from 60% meeting benchmark in the fall to 47% in the winter, while fourth grade saw a rise from 52% to 61%. Fourre said 82% of fourth graders met their fall-to-winter growth target for oral reading fluency DIBELS testing. Fifth grade literacy scores were nearly identical, with 58% meeting benchmark standards in the fall compared to 57% in the winter.
Fourre said the most promising data set came from the kindergarten math scores, as 72% of kindergarteners met their marks in the winter, up from 67% in the fall. Two unnamed schools saw increases from 86% to 90% over the two semesters.
While first grade math scores saw an 8% decrease in meeting benchmarks, 70% of students met their semester growth targets. Second graders improved significantly from fall to winter, with 56% in the fall to 66% in the winter. Third, fourth and fifth graders saw slight decreases in math scores.
Secondary scores dropped across the board in both literacy and math and in both middle and high school students. Fourre expressed his concern in secondary students meeting their semester growth targets, as 43% of middle schoolers and only 29% of freshman and sophomores reached their marks. Both middle and high school students saw 4% drops in reading scores (61% to 57% for middle school, 65% to 61% for high school).
Secondary math scores decreased, as well, as middle school percentages dropped from 57% to 53% while high school numbers dipped from 55% to 47%. Less than half of secondary students met their semester growth targets.
Fourre said the district is proud of its results from its belonging surveys that students take twice a year. The surveys measure students from grades three through 12 on their sense of belonging across four domains: feeling appreciated, feeling accepted, feeling treated fairly and feeling validated. Scores have steadily increased across the board since the survey was first administered in 2022, with peaks in the fall 2024 survey.
• 83% of students said that they feel appreciated
• 86% of students said that they feel accepted
• 91% of students said that they are treated fairly. This number has remained between 90% and 91% since the fall of 2022.
• 84% of students said that they feel validated
Fourre also showed ninth grade on track data, which measures a percentage of freshmen that pass all of their courses. In the first semester of the 2024-25 school year, 65% of students passed all of their classes, while 35% failed at least one course.
According to the Washington School Improvement Framework, six of the 10 schools in YCS showed no need for improvement based on state test proficiency and growth, regular attendance, graduation rates and multilingual proficiency, among other factors. The framework also divides students into groups, such as race and ethnicity, multilingual, special education and low income.
Yelm Middle School ranked in the framework’s Tier 1, which showed that the school has multiple targeted groups to address, while Fort Stevens, Prairie and Yelm Extension School appeared in Tier 3, which notes that the highest level of support from the state is required.
Woods said he hopes that the data helps community members get a more accurate picture of the district’s test scores.
“When people start making assumptions about our data, without context and without all the information, the majority of the time they’re going to come to a conclusion that is not accurate,” Woods said. “Most people have no idea what goes into this. This isn’t even all of it. We’re going to be very transparent about the data: the good, the bad and the ugly.
“We’re going to invite people to come in and help us come up with solutions,” he continued. “When they start hearing about challenges we have with attendance, with discipline, with filling staffing positions and with actually getting kids to take the assessments when they’re supposed to take it, people are going to start to see that this is an onion and there’s so many layers to it.”
