Brevard officials say early-year assessment shows mixed gains; district to tighten reporting of testing minutes

Miss Tara Harris, a district assessment presenter, told the Brevard Public Schools Board of Education on Oct. 7 that the district's Progress Monitoring 1 (PM1) data show modest gains in some early grades and mixed results in upper elementary and secondary grades. PM1, Harris said, is the baseline measure that shows "how our students come into our classrooms."

The presentation covered K'2 through 12 results, test-choice effects on reported proficiency and comparisons to last year's cohorts. Harris said kindergarteners taking the early literacy measure came in about 1 percentage point higher than last year, but cautioned that the kindergarten cell labeled 29 percent represented only seven students in Brevard. "That data at 29 percent, that makes up 7 students," she said. She also said more first-graders moved from the early-literacy measure to the grade-level reading assessment this year, which complicates simple year-to-year comparisons.

Harris flagged a pattern the district has observed for several years: Brevard's students often enter the year holding pace with high-performing districts but lose relative ground between PM2 and PM3. "It's between PM2 and PM3 where Brevard starts to lose some ground in growth and student achievement," she said, adding district leaders are urging schools to maintain a "year's worth of growth" even when students begin the year stronger than the prior cohort.

On elementary math, Harris described…