Maynardville Elementary Students Rank 4^th in Reading Benchmarks

Out of nineteen schools in Tennessee participating in round two of the Reading First initiative, Maynardville Elementary (K-3) students ranked fourth in benchmarks (benchmark means performing on or above grade level in reading) for the school year 2004-05.

Students and teachers in kindergarten, first, second and third grades at Maynardville Elementary are in the second year of participating in the Reading First initiative. The Reading First initiative includes high-level professional development for teachers to help implement explicit and systematic instruction, as well as frequent, rigorous assessments using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills to assess student performance and guide teacher instruction.

The Reading First program is evaluated yearly by the Center for Research in Education Policy, (CREP).  Recently, Maynardville Elementary received notification from the Tennessee State Department of Education, with the results from CREP.

The CREP DIBELS Outcome Indicators are a series of analysis and reporting tools that leverage data from the University of Oregon’s DIBELS Data System, in order to provide insight into two fundamental aspects of Early Literacy education and attainment:

• The degree to which students skills are improving over time, as measured by the CREP Progress Indicator (PI); and
• The overall attainment level, as measured by the Benchmark Percentage – the proportion of students meeting the pre-defined ‘benchmark’ standard on each test at the end of the assessment period.

The analysis is based on student-level attainment data and covers four of the standard DIBELS subtests from grades K through 3:

• DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency (Kindergarten only)
• DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (Kindergarten and First grade)
• DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency (Kindergarten and First grade)
• DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (First, Second and Third grades)

These tests are administered at least twice within the school year, and progress is measured between the initial and final tests within each grade year. Results are tracked on a per-school basis, both at the individual subtest level, and also aggregated across grades and/or subtests.

Additionally, the Oral Reading Fluency subtest results are aggregated across all three grades to which it is administered and used to develop rankings of all the schools within a population, in terms of both the CREP Progress Indicator, and the percentage at Benchmark.

 Under the DIBELS system, students are given a variety of age-specific, standardized tests on a pre-determined schedule each year. For each test, the students can be classified as either ‘At Risk’, ‘Some Risk’ or ‘Benchmark’, in order of increasing skill, depending on how their score compares to age-specific standard attainment levels. During each academic year, students’ performance can either:

• Maintain the status quo (e.g., a student who begins and ends the year with a ‘Some Risk’ assessment on a particular subtest)
• Progress by improving their assessment level over time (i.e., by moving from ‘At Risk’ to ‘Some Risk’, or from either of those levels to ‘Benchmark’)
• Regress by becoming relatively or absolutely less skilled over time, and so moving to a lower assessment level (i.e., by moving from ‘Benchmark’ to ‘Some Risk’, or from either of those levels to ‘At Risk’).

The ‘Benchmark Percentage’ outcome indicator is simply the percentage of students within the group that achieve a ‘Benchmark’ assessment at the end of the school year being reported on. This is a measure of the overall attainment level of the students as a whole; a higher score represents an overall higher level of competency in the particular test (or tests) to which it applies. However, it considers only the snapshot attainment level at the end of the year, and does not attempt to take into account the differing levels of ability which may be present within and between different groups of students, or the extent to which end-of-year outcome is merely a reflection of the relative abilities of the students at the beginning of the evaluation period.

The ‘CREP Progress Indicator’ (PI) measures the relative changes in students’ skills, rather than just the absolute level at the end of the period. It is represented on a scale of 0 to 100, as follows:

• Zero represents a worse case scenario in which all students regressed from ‘Benchmark’ to ‘At Risk’;
• Fifty is the neutral position, in which on average, students maintained a constant assessment level during the year;
• One hundred is the best case scenario, in which all students progress from ‘At Risk’ to ‘Benchmark’.

This means that PI scores below fifty represent an overall regression or decrease in attainment, and PI scores above fifty indicate net progress or improvement in assessments.

Taken together, the PI and Benchmark metrics provide a picture of not only the overall attainment level within the group against an objective standard, but also the extent to which the students were able to make progress, even if not all to a ‘Benchmark’ level.

Lucy Freyer, Maynardville Elementary School Literacy Coach, had this to say about the Reading First Initiative:  "All Kindergarten, first, second, third grade teachers, and our interventionists involved in the Reading First initiative are dedicated to helping all students achieve their optimal reading potential." 

“We are proud of the teachers, staff, and students at Maynardville Elementary and we are dedicated to maintaining high standards and high benchmarks the remainder of the year and in the future. We are indeed fortunate to have such a great staff of teachers at our school,” said Larry Neely, Principal of Maynardville Elementary.

Maynardville Elementary is the largest school in East Tennessee participating in the Reading First initiative.  As you visit or talk with your friends and acquaintances, take the time to celebrate and applaud the extraordinary efforts of the Maynardville Elementary School staff on the exceptional reading success of MES students as well as the outstanding dedication of Maynardville Elementary School teachers.