Siloam Springs presents growth-focused results, cites teacher turnover and interim gains at Southside

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. — Siloam Springs School District administrators on Monday presented a growth-centered analysis of district assessment results, telling the board that most campuses showed positive year-to-year growth while some specific courses and grades warrant targeted intervention.

At a work session led by Superintendent Shane (presenter), district data lead Joe explained that the reports focus on student growth — how much students improved compared with an expected growth benchmark — rather than only on achievement levels. “When you think of 0, think of it as you did what you were supposed to,” Joe said, describing the vertical growth line on the district’s scatter charts.

The presentation covered three report types for each campus: a scatter plot showing individual student growth vs. proficiency; a breakdown of growth by performance level (levels 1–4); and trend lines across multiple years. Joe told the board that some high-school math courses produced notably positive growth scores — for example, ninth-grade algebra showed a district-average positive growth (reported as 0.0794) and geometry reported strong positive averages (0.1623 and 0.1881 on separate geometry measures) — while ninth-grade biology showed a small negative average growth (reported as −0.0759) that contrasted with a positive average for tenth-grade biology (0.0134).

District staff attributed the ninth-grade biology decline in part to turnover: Shane and other administrators said several biology teachers who taught the cohort during testing were no longer in those classrooms. “We lost three of the biology teachers,” Shane said; he and other administrators said they hired or reassigned personnel and expect instruction to improve with more stable staffing.

Leaders described several midyear adjustments intended to improve instruction immediately rather than wait for end-of-year results. Those included temporarily assigning math- and content-certified instructional coaches and other certified staff into classrooms, hiring an experienced math teacher to replace a vacancy, and using the online Atlas assessment platform (the district’s adaptive assessment vendor) to run two interim assessments during the year. Joe said the district has used results from those interims to pivot midyear, including personnel moves and targeted interventions such as IXL for practice and intervention.

Administrators pointed to Southside Elementary as an example of a campus that used the interim data to change practice: the district reported roughly a 10 percentage-point increase in the number of students classified as proficient between Interim 1 (September) and Interim 2 (January/February) on those classroom-aligned interims. Joe also noted that the state’s reported proficiency for the compared interim was 22 percent, and district officials said Southside’s interim results compared favorably to that frame.

The board discussion emphasized “tier 1” classroom instruction, engagement and classroom management as levers for growth. Staff explained that tier 1 refers to everyday whole-class instruction and argued that about 80 percent of students should master a taught concept from tier 1 instruction without reteaching; effective tier 1 instruction reduces the need for intervention tiers 2 and 3. Board members and staff also discussed secondary-specific challenges, including the demands of block scheduling (85-minute classes) and how the longer periods require different lesson-planning approaches.

Officials described how the new state test structure and the switch to Atlas/Cambium-era assessments changed what the district measures and how quickly the district receives data. Joe and others said the new platform supplies interim and summative results in the same system, which allows for more timely, actionable comparisons to state averages and the district’s peers.

No formal board votes were recorded at the session. Instead, the meeting functioned as a deep-dive briefing and a planning discussion: staff said they will continue to monitor interim scores, deploy coaches and instructional supports where interim and classroom-walkthrough data show gaps, and present achievement/growth updates to the board when official state results and school letter grades are released.

Board members asked for and were given several clarifications about the data: how the growth metric is calculated (0 = expected growth; positive = growth above expected); why some students are excluded from a cohort (e.g., high mobility, enrollment window rules, ELL/EOP exemptions); and why advanced and non-advanced cohorts can differ on the same exam (for example, ninth graders taking biology as an advanced course vs. general-education tenth graders who take biology later). Joe said the state’s cut scores define the proficiency line on the charts and that foreign-exchange students can be documented for exemption under the state’s rules.

Administrators closed by reiterating that the district is using interim data to make targeted, short-term changes while also pursuing longer-term goals — such as improving tier 1 instruction, strengthening teacher mentoring and stabilizing staffing in key courses — that officials said should produce stronger growth and achievement in future statewide assessments.