Clintondale Board reviews NWEA results and flags chronic absenteeism as barrier to growth

At its June 22 meeting, the Clintondale Community Schools Board heard a detailed presentation of the district’s spring NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association) assessment results from Chief Academic Officer Dr. Shauna Helmler.

Dr. Helmler explained how NWEA’s RIT scale and percentile-based norms work and said those norms assume fall, winter and spring testing windows that do not always match Clintondale’s schedule. She emphasized that large standard deviations indicate classrooms with widely differing academic needs and require substantial differentiation.

“Standard deviation is really important when we look at NWEA scores,” Dr. Helmler said. “A standard deviation of 18 and above indicates a very wide range of academic abilities in that particular group.” She walked trustees through kindergarten-through-fifth-grade reading and math norms and then school-by-school results, noting kindergarten growth of roughly 14 points in some schools and varied growth across grades.

Dr. Helmler highlighted school-level results: McLennan kindergarten rose from about 135.7 to 150.1 in reading (about 14 points); Parker showed notable reading gains in several grades and site-level percentages of students meeting growth projections; Rainbow Early Childhood Center tested only in kindergarten. In math, several elementary grades showed strong observed growth, while secondary grades displayed much larger standard deviations — indicating wide variation in student performance.

Board members asked whether the district had made significant progress compared with the prior year. Dr. Helmler said she had not completed a direct year-over-year comparison in the meeting materials but judged the district to be “pretty close to being on track with what NWEA’s expectations are.”

On low middle-school math growth she said students were often starting below grade-level norms and that the district will change its approach: “We are adding a math intervention. We’re switching math interventions from what they’ve been doing before… there’ll be one teacher that’s like the interventionist teacher for math and for reading for secondary,” she said, adding that MTSS scheduling will be used to ensure students who need support are placed into those classes.

Trustees pressed Dr. Helmler on how the results affect the state’s CSI (Comprehensive Support and Improvement) process. She said the recently reported scores would not be used for this year’s CSI determination: “These scores don’t count. So, what we’re looking at our main focus too is also looking at M-Step scores,” she said, while noting that had the new numbers been used they might have changed narrow prior margins.

Attendance emerged as a recurrent concern. Dr. Helmler described chronic absenteeism as a major constraint on assessment validity and on students’ ability to show growth: “It’s a county-wide issue. It’s a state-wide issue and it’s a national crisis with chronic absenteeism,” she said. She said the district is part of the Macomb County Attendance Network, will continue incentives and data tracking, and will examine board policy as needed to strengthen attendance procedures.

The superintendent also reported summer school enrollment at about 180 students and a near-complete resolution of corrective action plans in special education, with only three remaining items reported as ongoing assignments.

The presentation provided the board with a technical framing of NWEA metrics and identified attendance and targeted interventions as the district’s immediate operational priorities.

The board moved on to other business after a period of questions and clarifications.