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The pandemic has impacted Lee County students, some profoundly, with 56 percent of second graders performing at a kindergarten level in reading basics.
In August, there were children returning to school who had not been on campus for two years. Absenteeism became a huge factor. And students were academically behind.
Second graders, for example, have yet to experience a "normal" school year. The fourth quarter of their kindergarten year, when concepts begin to really come together, COVID started and schools went virtual.
The result is second grade students are now really struggling on their exemplars, leaving teachers going back to the fourth quarter of kindergarten to teach those concepts, School District of Lee County officials said in a School Board meeting this week.
"We are really working to put in different pieces of intervention. Really Great Reading we are pushing out and utilizing for intervention," Teaching and Learning Director Dr. Bethany Quisenberry said, adding that the district has purchased additional programs for moving phonics to fluency. "You need phonics to be able to read. What we are seeing with first and second grade students is they are still unable to read."
Phonological awareness has also been hindered for Voluntary Prekindergarten students, according to data gathered from VPK Assessments. The assessment is given at the beginning, middle and end of the year. Early Childhood Learning Services Director Mary Grace Romo said they are assessing where children should be a the end of Pre-K and the amount of progress that has been made between AP (Assessment Period) 1 and AP2.
The AP 1 showed 11 percent of students making expected level of progress and 42 parent at AP2 -- half the target goal. The baseline is 79 percent, the target 84 percent.
"I wonder how much growth has been impacted by teachers in masks and children in masks," Romo asked. "Part of phonological awareness is seeing how language is made."
The district also saw an increase in students who scored at a level one on their Florida Standards Assessment, as young as third grade. Level one is an inadequate proficiency level, two is below satisfactory, level three is satisfactory, or passing, while level four is proficient and level five shows mastery.
"There was a substantial increase in level one, two and a decrease in three, four and five," Accountability, Research & Assessment Director Dr. Mathew Kaye said. "One of the key takeaways that we find is across disciplines students are out performing their levels of the prior year with the exception of level one students. At the level one that is the only point you see decreased performance. There are more level ones than we have had in the past. The composition changes and we have more students academically vulnerable."
The district has a teaching and learning cycle: plan for standards-based instruction, teach with effective strategies, assess, analyze data and student work, adapt teaching and re-assessing and reflect. This cycle may be gone through several times as exemplars show which standards have or have not been mastered.
The challenge, reducing the achievement gap for students returning to school, while maintaining the academic achievement moving forward. That gap has begun at the early childhood level of VPK.
Romo said the number of children tested failed significantly due to the pandemic.
The district looked at the Key Performance Indicator: Teaching Strategies Gold in the area of literacy, mathematics and language. At quarter one, 26 percent of students made the expected level of progress on the assessment in literacy. That percentage jumped to 58 percent in quarter two. The baseline for literacy is 79 percent with a target of 80 percent.
For mathematics, 17 percent of students made the expected level of progress on the assessment for quarter one. At quarter two 40 percent of students made the expected level. The baseline for math is 76 percent with a goal of 89 percent.
The final group, language, had 27 percent of students making the expected level at quarter one and 50 percent at quarter two. The baseline is 80 percent and target is 86 percent.
The VPK Assessment also tested for mathematics and oral language, in addition to phonological awareness.
Mathematics had 9 percent of students making expected level of progress at AP1 and 58 percent at AP2. There is a baseline percentage of 76 and a target of 85 percent.
The final assessment is for oral language, which resulted in 25 percent of students making expected level of progress at AP1 and 65 percent at AP2. There is a baseline percentage of 80 percent and a target of 84 percent.
Kaye said Lee County, this year, is onboarding a more academically vulnerable group of students, students who are below, or substantially below proficient in state wide assessments. He said this is a statewide phenomenon.
"Our proficiency is trending lower than what it did at this time last year. When broken down by student strata, students are performing better, but overall proficiency lower," Kaye said.
The district conducts progress monitoring for quarter one, two and three and the FSA and EOC provide the progress monitoring for quarter four.
Kaye said for English Language Arts, grades third through 10th, proficiency trends are down from last year. He said the learning gains are slightly higher.
The district looked at which students scored a one to five in proficiency at the different grade levels, which gave them a read of the composition of grouping.
There is "a greater percentage of students substantially below ELA proficiency," Kaye said.
Level one proficiency was at 22 percent during the 2020-2021 school year, compared to 26 percent for the 2021-2022 school year, meaning more children were scoring at the lowest level. The drop in student proficiency was show in other levels as well.
There was a significant change in the composition math cohort. He said 22 percent of students were at a level one, compared to 33 percent this year, meaning substantially more children were scoring at the inadequate proficiency level
"The performance overall is likely going to come down. There is such a higher number of them," Kaye said.
Simmons said they realized that a lot of their principals and staff were not in a good place when it came to running the school because they felt bogged down. To help with that, district staff provided student data, all in one place, and easy to find for principals, staff and teachers.
"Dr. Kaye has done a tremendous job in getting this data. He has made a commitment to go out and train principals and their team and teachers to access this data," Simmons said.
He said it is important to look at each individual student's progress.
With quarter four focusing on intervention, it is important to take principals through exemplars and progress monitoring data.
"I don't know of anytime in my 26 years in the district (has it been) easy to get to data driven all the way down to a student in the classroom," Simmons said. "We want to make it one-stop shopping. If we see areas they need help with we immediately assign staff and assist in areas that they need."
Absenteeism
The district has faced quite a few challenges, with one being absenteeism for both staff and students.
For student attendance, Spiro said they had a banner day on March 8 with 8,328 students absent, the best number since Nov. 9, 2021. The second best day they have had since winter break happened on Feb. 16 when 9,194 children were absent that day.
Teaching and Learning Director Lori Houchin said a traditional school year pre-COVID there would be one student absent per day in a class of 24 students. She said teachers would only miss 5 percent, or less, of their entire work year.
Fast forward to the first semester of this school year, there were three students absent per day in a class of 24 students and staff absences doubled.
"It really hinders the momentum of learning," she said.
Romo said they, too, are feeling the impact of chronically absent students. In August, 32 percent of students were chronically absent with the peak of 53 percent in January.
"Children can't get ready for kindergarten if they are not in school," she said.
Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jeff Spiro said transportation also had unintended consequences for students, as they miss tutoring in the morning and are unable to stay after school. He said it has been a challenge to get kids to school, or convince them to come to school if the bus did not come.
With bus driver shortages, Spiro said the key learning they found occurred during progress monitoring week. Buses are not running routes and kids are not being picked up. For one high school, the first day 10 buses did not make their routes, followed by five the next two days.
"All the students that didn't take the progress monitoring adversely impacted student grades as well," Spiro said.
School Development Executive Director Linda Maere said at the secondary level they adjusted schedules to offset the transportation challenges. The district changed schedules to put elective courses first and core classes later in the day to ensure student learning.
Assistance for teachers
A great deal of training has taken place to help teachers, as well as weekly cross-division collaboration and monthly principal meetings to help fill the need schools are experiencing. Some of the information shared really dove into the student learning issue and how to help with assessments, interventions and identifying pitfalls.
"We have gone out and also identified some patterns as a collective group to focus on and bring some more information back to the schools," School Development Executive Director Dr. Marsha Bur said.
The district also has more than 1,000 teachers, leading and learning representatives, at every grade level and content level that are trained every quarter.
"We focused on intervention, acceleration nd standard based instruction for that quarter," Quisenberry said.
At the elementary school level, the countdown has begun for assessments, 32 instruction days away. Currently math and science is struggling and behind pace.
"We began to create alternative pacing schedules. Our teams in secondary and elementary are pushing out to those schools. If you are behind a week, two weeks, a month, those students will not have been taught those standards," she said.
To help with math, the district has a program, Take 10! Tasks, which trains students to take out the trash by teaching them how to isolate what is needed for the standard.
The high school level is offering assistance through drill downs, which are based on specific standards students need to learn.
"Teachers are able to take this and give activities to meet their needs," Teaching and Learning Director Candace Allevato said. "It really provides them the opportunity to drill down to the students."
With assessments just 16 blocks of instruction away as of Monday, time frames are being looked at in an effort to further help close the achievement gap.
With math, Allevato said they see large gaps, which are very skilled based pieces. She said not any two high schools, let alone two classrooms in the same building are pacing the same. To accommodate this, Allevato said they have deviated away from their traditional scope and sequenced and restructured the remaining school year.
"Each high school has their own individualized calendar. Where are you, so we are consistently and continuously adapting and reacting," Allevato said.
Graduation is also at the forefront for high school students.
School Development Executive Director Clayton Simmons said to keep students on track for graduation there are individualized student and parent/guardian meetings with counselors to make sure the students are where they need to be. He said Edgenuity is partnering with the district to provide certified online coaches seven days a week after Spring Break.
In addition, math tutoring and after hours tutoring are being offered to prepare students.
Other high school programs include Back on Track, a program for high school juniors and seniors to retrieve credits. Simmons said they were able to retrieve 1,236 credits during evening hours. One day a week for 30 minutes there is a mentoring home room program offered to students where each teacher has assigned students to check on and make sure they are on track. If not, the teacher provides additional support.