This year Peabody Charter School in Santa Barbara saw more students meeting or exceeding math and English standards on the state’s Smarter Balanced test and saw more students meet and exceed standards in math than they did before the pandemic.
Each year, students from third through eighth grade and 11th grade take the state’s Smarter Balanced Test. The test evaluates students’ understanding of math and English language arts/literacy (ELA).
As Noozhawk evaluated test scores, some schools stood out for their progress.
This year, Peabody saw 66.12% of students met or exceeded standards in English and 61.74% of students meet or exceeded standards in math.
English scores have stayed consistent since 2019 and math scores have seen drastic improvement. In 2019 49.42% met or exceeded standards in math, in 2022, the first year since 2019 that all students had to take the test, 60.28% met or exceeded math standards.
The increase in math scores is rare, statewide math scores have decreased since the pandemic.
Across all grades in the Santa Barbara Unified School District, 45.02% of students met or exceeded standards in math in 2019 but this year only 38.43% met or exceeded math standards.
Demian Barnett, Peabody principal and superintendent, said he and the staff were pleasantly surprised by their scores on the state assessment test, and were happy to see improvement and no major drop in scores from the year before.
While math scores across all grades statewide have decreased since 2019, Peabody saw more students meeting and exceeding standards in math.
Barnett credits their math improvement to adopting a new curriculum before the pandemic, and already being comfortable with the curriculum when they moved to online learning.
As well as the fact that they returned to in-person learning sooner than other schools in Santa Barbara. Peabody returned in January of 2021, while other schools went back to in person learning in spring of 2021.
“I think that math really took a hit in the shutdown because it was just a little bit harder to do, it's a harder skill for students to practice in isolation than reading and writing,” Barnett said
Peabody Assistant Principal Claire Krock credits the vertical conversations amongst teachers as another reason why math scores have seen improvement.
“The vertical conversations that we've been having within grade levels, where we're talking about specific skills or areas that we have seen that need attention or that students are experiencing more difficulties in,” Krock said “Having that conversation across grade levels has been really important.”
These conversations involve teachers from one grade talking to the teachers in the grade above about what material they covered and what areas students will need to learn in the next year.
“It's important that the teachers have a chance to connect and talk about what's happened instructionally so that they know what's next,” Krock said.
Within the Santa Barbara Unified School District, the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards is relatively consistent across all grades.
At Peabody, more third- and fourth-graders are meeting and exceeding standards in math and English than fifth- and sixth-graders.
In English, 71.56% of third-graders met or exceeded standards and 63.92.% of sixth-graders met or exceeded standards. In math 79.82% of third-graders met or exceeded standards and 47.96% of sixth-graders met or exceeded standards.
One explanation Krock points to is that today’s 5th and 6th graders were in 1st and 2nd grade when the pandemic happened.
“They missed some really foundational information,” Krock said. “We all did our best. Every school did the best that they could, but you can't replace in person learning and I think that those were really crucial times to miss.”
Similar to state patterns, students at Peabody that are not socioeconomically disadvantaged were more likely to meet and exceed standards than students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
In English, 46.7% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students met or exceeded standards and only 41.41% met and exceeded standards in math. Barnett said that often when students don’t feel like they belong at a school, that feeling is reflected back in their performance.
“If one group of students are excelling at a different rate than another group, that's our work, that's because of what we do here, not because of what students bring or don't bring to the school,” Barnett said.
“We continually ask ourselves, what are we doing as an institution? What systems do we have in place in this institution, that are either intentionally or even unintentionally sending out a variety of messages better than leading to those results?”
Krock told Nozhawk that thanks to the digital age we live in, literacy is becoming a main way individuals participate through culture.
“To be able to participate in our culture, you have to be able to read,” Krock said. “We need to be meeting all of our students when they enter into school, wherever they are at and provide that instruction sequentially, explicitly, systematically from the time they enter school until they are a proficient reader.”
While they were happy to see the scores they got, Barnett emphasized that these scores are not the school’s main focus.
“Scores are a tool for us to get a reflection on our work,” Barnett said. “When we see scores going up, what we're seeing is kids doing better and having more fun.”
Barnett emphasized that he doesn’t look at the scores to see what schools are doing better than others, and that they often communicate with other local elementary schools to share ideas, solutions, and problems.
“We definitely don't look at these scores in any sort of competitiveness, or that this makes Peabody necessarily a better school or a worse school. It's just a reflection of what we're doing here.” Barnett said. “There's no teacher out there who's not working as hard as the people here.”
Looking into the future, Barnett and Krock said they want to see kids become proficient in reading math at an early age and stay proficient as they get older.
“Every month, we're doing assessments on our kids making progress towards the end goal of being proficient readers, writers, mathematicians, and then we keep making these fine tuned, alterations just so that we can make sure we're doing everything we can to make sure students are reaching their highest academic potential,” Krock told Noozhawk.
