District assessment staff reported preliminary 2025 results Wednesday showing improvements in several areas but said state comparisons and finalized files are still pending.

Chris Demers, district assessment coordinator, summarized early returns for the SAT (11th grade) and SAS (grades 3–8 and selected high school assessments) and urged caution: the results are preliminary and the state has not yet returned official, finalized figures. “This is a story. This is the beginning of the story,” Demers said, asking the board to wait for summertime data work before drawing definitive conclusions.

Demers said preliminary SAT results showed increases in reading and writing proficiency and a recovery in mathematics after a disappointing dip in 2024. For SAT math, he reported the district’s percent meeting benchmark returned to about 28% in 2025 after a prior decline; reading and writing also showed upward movement. District staff noted some year‑to‑year cohort differences and said they would not speculate on causes without deeper analysis.

On state SAS assessments in grades 3–8, Demers described cohort gains. He said a cohort that was third grade two years ago moved from 38% proficient to 58% proficient across the latest measurement intervals in ELA, representing combined gains over multiple years. He also highlighted a persistent drop between fifth and sixth grade in reading that the district intends to investigate.

“We have time built into this summer, a data retreat with administrators,” Demers said. “This serves us well because as we sort of predict what we might expect to see and we sort of draw out our inferences, we expose our own internal biases.”

District staff emphasized the tests are one data point among many and that classroom and curriculum-based measures will help direct instructional changes. They also said student attendance and chronic absence remain strong predictors of test performance and that schools used targeted supports and social‑emotional supports during testing windows. The state’s official cohort-adjusted data and statewide comparisons are expected in the fall, district staff said.