When a school earns the state’s “standard of excellence” title, it’s no small feat.

Kansas has about 1,600 schools. And last year, just 392 of them earned the title in mathematics.

“It’s pretty difficult, especially if a school has been doing well in the past,” said Alexa Pochowski, assistant commissioner for learning services at the Kansas State Department of Education.

So when Lawrence school officials reviewed the latest preliminary results and figured 10 of the district’s 21 schools earned the title for math assessment scores, it was considered remarkable.

“It’s a huge thing,” said Lynda Allen, director of math and science for the Lawrence school district. “We’re doing well. We’re never going to say ‘we made it.’ We’re already looking at the 2005-2006 standards.”

The standard of excellence requires a certain percentage of students be considered proficient, advanced or exemplary. It also means there must be a shift in the number of students with unsatisfactory scores.

In the latest assessment, 70.8 percent of Lawrence students performed at proficient or better. A year ago, it was 63.4 percent. The state’s performance targets in math were 53.5 percent for kindergarten through eighth grade and 38 percent for students in ninth through 12th grade.

The improvement in math assessment scores wasn’t wholly unexpected by Lawrence school officials. It something they were hoping for three years ago when the math curriculum changed, Allen said.

Last year, the district was below the state average in some areas of the math assessment, but Allen said teachers noticed a change in the students.

“They said the kids seemed to know more,” she said. “We knew another year would make the difference, and it really did make a big difference. It’s not an accident that we arrived here. We should be some of the highest scores in the state. We have wonderful teachers, students and parents.”

‘Intentional’ focus

Although the final results of last year’s assessments won’t be available until October, Pochowski said it appeared many schools had made progress in math scores.

“With reading, it will be a little more difficult because the scores were high to start with,” she said. “But we are seeing tremendous gains in math.”

Pochowski attributed the success to districts, schools and teachers having a relentless focus on improving scores.

“I think they always have done that,” she said. “But it’s a very intentional and clear focus.”

Al Gyles, a math teacher a Free State High School, said teachers had done intensive staff development and were trying to concentrate on improving how students do on state assessments.

“We’ve taken a look at past results and looked at what areas we were weak in and which groups of student may be having problems,” Gyles said.

Addressing problems

Some of the problems came down to students needing to get a better handle on math lingo, he said. Sometimes, students have issues with assessment tests because they don’t fully understand what they are supposed to do based on the directions.

Allen admitted that had been an issue. She said new curriculum had helped teach students math vocabulary. Math labs at the junior high schools also have helped.

Carol Conrad, who is in her second year teaching sections of math labs at South Junior High School, said the labs supported the information taught and provided limited homework help. Last year, she said, students actually asked to move into the math lab because they saw other students benefiting from it.

“It helps tremendously,” Conrad said. “Sometimes, the classes move so quickly, and students are in a large class. They can get lost. But we’re able to reteach the lesson and help them learn better.”

Elementary schools

The elementary schools also have an intervention program for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, Allen said. Intervention efforts would include spending extra time with students who are having trouble with the concepts in the curriculum. Schools saw some progress with students involved in the interventions, she said.

Sunset Hill School principal Chris Bay said he expected the school would do well on the assessments. Based on the preliminary information, Sunset Hill will meet the standard of excellence for a second year.

He said through probe assessments, which are like pretests for the actual assessment, teachers could figure out what students did and didn’t know.

“This comes down to what the teachers are doing,” he said. “They’re monitoring and checking out how the students are doing. They know if they need to go back and help a student with something.”