With the release of the Smarter Balanced test scores a month ago, the Dell Rapids School administration has been making plans on how to improve on their scores next year.  Principals Mr. Jay Nelson, Mr. Fran Ruesink, and Dr. Kimberly Kludt presented their ideas to the Dell Rapids School Board during the school board’s regular meeting on Monday, October 12th.

The Dell Rapids Elementary School was labeled a status school, meaning it performed in the top 5-10% of schools in the Student Performance Index (SPI) across South Dakota.  The SPI for elementary and middle schools is a combination of attendance and Smarter Balance test scores.

Mr. Nelson stated, “I’m very, very pleased with that. It goes back to obviously attendance of students and parent’s support of the school, and of course a great staff working with our kids on a very difficult test.”

Mr. Nelson also mentioned a possible change in the elementary school’s recording of attendance.  He said that it’s a state directive to almost set up periods of the day in the elementary school much like the high school does.  He believes this new reporting may help improve the attendance records for his students.  Mr. Nelson also has plans in place to continue to provide support to students that did not meet standards on the Smarter Balanced tests, but also to provide more support to those students who may have met standards by just a few points to help improve their scores next year.

Mr. Ruesink echoed the statements of Mr. Nelson on providing support to those students that didn’t meet the standards as well as supporting the students that met standards by only a few points.  Mr. Ruesink also said that if scores don’t start to improve, they’ll have to start asking other schools what they are doing differently.

“That’s what we’re going to have to do is start looking at schools that are performing really well, and just say, ‘What are you doing? What’s different in your instruction than what we’re doing?’”, said Mr. Ruesink.

Dr. Kludt explained to the school board some of the changes the high school is working on to improve their scores.  She stated that teachers are making more use of the SDMyLife ACT Test Prep in classrooms, which correlates very closely to the Smarter Balanced test scores.  She also said they are “raising the bar” in all of the classes to include more reading, more writing, and more rigor.  The high school administration is also requiring the students to take more rigorous classes, decreasing the the number of study halls and teacher assistance periods to keep students in the classrooms, and also implementing plans for a new “Quarrier Way” program.

The first Smarter Balanced test scores and district report cards were released on Tuesday, September 22nd, for school districts across the state of South Dakota.  Testing was based on the Common Core State Standards, which has been adopted by South Dakota.  The exams that were administered to the students are measuring how prepared a student is for life after high school.  The report card for each district includes performance information, including results from the Smarter Balanced test.

Dell Rapids Superintendent Dr. Summer Schultz said, “I’m pleased South Dakota schools again have access to standardized achievement data in English Language Arts and Math.   The infancy of Smarter Balanced Assessments leaves districts little opportunity to determine student growth or school improvement, therefore, it’s difficult to generalize a district-wide response to our data.   At this time, building administrators and teachers will dig into student and grade level data.  Focus areas will be determined and building level goals will be created.”

58.30% of all Dell Rapids students who took the test last spring tested at or above the benchmark for reading, compared to 50% of all the students in South Dakota.  44.98% of all Dell Rapids students tested at or above the benchmark for math, compared to 41.29% of all the students in South Dakota.  72.13% of students received an ACT score of 20 or higher for math, and 73.77% of students received an ACT score of 18 or higher for English at Dell Rapids.

Schultz also said, “I am very pleased to congratulate our Elementary on being labeled a Status School.  This means that they earned School Performance Index (SPI) value ranks in the top five to 10 percent of all schools in South Dakota.  I believe this is a reflection of the hard work our staff displays each school day and the quality implementation of new standards.”

The full report and breakdown by class can be found by clicking here.

Report cards from other districts can be found on the Department of Education’s website.