NOVEMBER 19, 2014
HORNELL, NY – The Hornell City School District Board of Education met Wednesday night and the Superintendent Doug Wyant and Director of Curriculum Michelle Fitzsimmons presented last year’s (2013-2014) report card.
The data presented showed that the overall ELA scores had fallen about 3% for students in grades 3-8, while math scores went up about 3% for students in grades 3-8.
Michelle Fitzsimmons said that one of the reasons for this is because when the school year started they used all of the common core math modules, while they only used some of the ELA standards set forth by the common core standards.
Fitzsimmons went to explain that this year they are doing more with the ELA portion of the Common core standards. Overall the school district, is about where they want to be in terms of academic achievement with the new standards, meeting the benchmarks set in place by the state department of education in mathematics and lagging just a bit behind in ELA. Superintendent Wyant noted that these numbers are last years’ data because there is a one year lag, in terms of data being compiled and analyzed.
It should also be noted that the district has now had a year to learn the ropes with common core and there should be improvements in both Math and ELA in the coming year.
Curriculum director Fitzsimmons noted that it will take 5-7 years before we start to see any real world benefits from the introduction of common core into the school system, but also noted that the change to common core is important, because we needed to change to keep up with the rest of the world in order for our students to compete on the international stage.
