At the Tempe Union High School District meeting, district assessment lead Doctor Lehi presented the district’s common final exam program, shared results across English and math, discussed technical measures used to evaluate tests, and described early FAFSA outreach and postsecondary enrollment tracking.

Lehi said the district maintains a “balanced assessment system” that spans daily teacher-created checks, PLC unit assessments and common final exams used both formatively and summatively. "Anything really above 0.7 is considered a reliable test," Lehi said when explaining the reliability metric used to evaluate common finals, and described cadre processes for reviewing item discrimination, test difficulty and proficiency standards.

Key details Lehi gave:
- The district houses 67 common final exams that are tied to course blueprints and aligned standards.
- Final exams contribute 20 percent of a student’s semester grade.
- Math common finals generally show high reliability (often above 0.85); a newly introduced “basic math” common final (for pared-down scope courses such as basic algebra and financial math) showed a reliability around 0.5 in its pilot administration and will be revised.
- ELA assessments are in the first or second year of revised scope-and-sequence alignment; one honors ELA 9 administration showed a percent-correct of 76 and an initial reliability of about 0.5, prompting cadre review to adjust item difficulty or expectations.
- Across all courses, the percentage of assigned F grades is below 10 percent; American Indian students were noted at approximately 12 percent F-rate in the district’s snapshot.
- Academic-risk grouping: about 11 percent of students had one to two F grades (low-to-moderate risk), and about 4 percent had three or more Fs (high risk), who are the focus of school MTSS interventions.

Lehi also reviewed postsecondary measures and outreach: FAFSA has been open five weeks at the time of the presentation and the district has already run in-class FAFSA workshops with counseling and external partners. “The FAFSA form has been open for only five weeks at this point,” Lehi said, and noted district workshops included help establishing FSA IDs and starting applications; ADE and ASU Connect representatives participated in some events.

Lehi referenced national-level reports used for planning — he noted a National Student Clearinghouse chart that was later retracted and a Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education analysis projecting a longer-term “demographic cliff,” which the district uses to inform CTE planning. He said district postsecondary enrollment is above the state average and closely tracks national enrollment lines in the district’s available data.

Board members asked for clarifications and future data breakdowns. Member Gutierrez Miller requested clearer communication materials for parents and asked about the purpose and trajectory of the basic math courses; Vice President Steele and Board member Hodge asked for disaggregated reporting by special education and instructional level and for inclusion of trade and certificate programs in postsecondary tracking. Lehi said the district will provide further detail and school-level data on request and noted some items are in early pilot stages and will stabilize as assessments are refined.

No board action was taken on the presentation; several members requested additional disaggregations and follow-up reports.