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Associate superintendent outlines year‑end assessment results and targeted intervention plan
Summary
Associate Superintendent Cindy Barris presented K–8 milestone and state test results, explained cut‑score alignment work and CFA‑driven tutoring plans, and flagged that La Plata Middle School (CSI) will seek state approval to use district assessments for targeted interventions.
Associate Superintendent Cindy Barris presented the district’s year‑end K–8 assessment data to the Silver Consolidated Schools board on Aug. 19, laying out how locally administered milestone tests (Milestone 1, Milestone 2, Milestone 3) are intended to correlate with the state test and describing a district‑wide push to use data for rapid intervention.
Barris said the district is reviewing the cut scores that place students into novice, nearing proficiency, proficient and advanced categories so that locally developed TOPS milestone results better align with state cut scores. "A cut score is the score that allows you to fall in one category or another," she said, and added the district will "tweak our cut scores so they match the state cut scores" and then share a technical manual with the board.
On performance, Barris reported district‑wide math results for grades 3–8 of roughly 39% novice, 31% nearing proficiency, 23% proficient and 5% advanced. She said the goal is to see students progress from novice to nearing proficiency and beyond across milestones, and that this year’s emphasis is on intervention — "what do we do if they don't" — rather than only on instructional scope and sequence.
Barris described how the district will use targeted tutoring funded through Title I and common formative assessments (CFAs) to identify missing standards and intervene quickly. She emphasized tutoring is not homework help but curriculum remediation driven by assessment results. "This assessment will tell you specifically what standard they're missing and how the sites make adjustments for it," she said.
The presentation also addressed special education testing and inclusion. Barris noted some students take alternate assessments and others take the same milestones/state test; she said several life‑skills classes are excluded from the milestone counts, and that individual IEP teams determine accommodations.
Barris highlighted a bright spot at La Plata Middle School: an unusually high percentage of advanced ELA (reported at about 31.06% in the advanced row), but she also said the campus carries a CSI designation and the district will petition the state to allow use of Star and district assessments as evidence for local decision‑making. Barris said staff (including Star representatives and data analysts) would meet the state the following day to discuss that petition.
She closed by offering to provide a detailed technical manual and invited board follow‑up questions; board members asked for more granular figures and for the percentage of teachers who have attended the Ron Clark Academy training, which she said she would supply.
The presentation was a non‑action information item; Barris will circulate the technical documentation and follow up with board members and staff as the district pursues cut‑score adjustments and state conversations about assessment use.
