Schools, parents warned about ‘dismal’ test scores

After seeing that most students in Tennessee didn’t meet the state’s new benchmarks on tests they took last spring, local officials are bracing for the worst.

Hamilton County Schools likely won’t know how students fared until sometime in September, but officials said the district’s averages usually are comparable to the state’s overall scores.

“The results are going to be dismal at best,” said Kirk Kelly, the school system’s director of accountability and testing.

Across the state, only 30 percent of sixth-graders met or exceeded the new benchmarks. Twenty-nine percent of seventh-graders, and 26 percent of eighth-graders did the same, according to data released Friday.

State officials have been preparing for the low scores for more than a year after Tennessee racheted up its standards beginning last fall. But even with tougher standards and tests, state officials said they are particularly worried about low scores in middle school math, an area of perennial concern in Hamilton County.

“I’m really concerned,” said Gary Nixon, executive director of the Tennessee Board of Education. “It’s worse than what I’d anticipated.”

Instead of having three categories in which to group students’ scores — below proficient, proficient and advanced — the state now has four: below basic, basic, proficient and advanced.

Nixon said the new categories are to give parents a better idea of how their student actually is performing academically. Unlike previous years, if eighth-grade students in Tennessee score proficient on state tests, it is likely they also will score proficient on the Explore test, a pre-ACT.

“Parents should not be discouraged if they get a report that says (their child scored) ‘basic,’” he said. “What they have now is an accurate report of where they are. At least now they have good data.”

Follow Kelli Gauthier on Twitter at twitter.com/gauthierkelli.