Public schools in Charleston's more affluent South Hills area had Kanawha County's highest standardized testing proficiency rates last school year in math and English language arts, while an elementary school on the city's low-income West Side had Kanawha's lowest proficiency rate in English.
Additionally, a high school led by the 2016 West Virginia Association of Secondary School Principals' principal of the year has the county's lowest math proficiency rate.
The proficiency rates gaps are large. Though it could take perhaps countless hours to determine, if possible, exactly why each school got a certain proficiency rate, education experts said Wednesday that socioeconomic characteristics like family income are the biggest factor in how students score on standardized exams.
The West Virginia Department of Education has publicly released individual public schools' standardized testing proficiency rates for the 2015-16 school year. You can look up your school's performance by visiting wvde.state.wv.us/zoomwv, clicking on the big blue "ZoomWV Data Dashboard" button, and using the "State Assessment Results" tab in the blue bar at the top of the page you're led to.
The proficiency rates shown include students' scores on both the Smarter Balanced tests that most pupils take annually and scores from roughly 2,500 students statewide who took the West Virginia Alternate Assessment, which is given to the students who have the most significant cognitive disabilities.
Department spokeswoman Kristin Anderson said this 2015-16 data isn't considered "accountability data" because it counts as part of schools' proficiency rates the scores of all students who took the tests, including those who may have only been at the schools a short time. She said a student must have attended a school for 135 days - 75 percent of the school year - to have their score considered within the accountable data.
Third- through 11th-graders take the math and English exams, which are aligned to the Common Core national standards blueprint. The annual standardized testing each spring also includes science exams for just grades four, six and 10, but those tests aren't Smarter Balanced and there are no Common Core standards for science.
The proficiency rate for Smarter Balanced is the percentage of students who score a 3 or 4 on the test's 1-4 scale.
"Students performing at Levels 3 and 4 are considered on track to demonstrating the knowledge and skills necessary for college and career readiness," the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium states on its website. "Detailed Achievement Level Descriptors were written by teachers and college faculty."
For example, the descriptor of what scoring a 3 on the math exam means in elementary school is: "The student has met the achievement standard and demonstrates progress toward mastery of the knowledge and skills in mathematics needed for likely success in future coursework." The 1-4 scores themselves are based on more specific scores in the thousands range.
The department's release of the school-level proficiency rates - following the release of the statewide rate and county-level rates - comes ahead of the planned release in November of controversial A-F grades for entire schools. Students' overall scores and increases or decreases in their scores on the standardized tests, given each spring, will be the primary factors in what grades schools receive.
Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary had Kanawha's lowest English proficiency rate, at just about 16 percent of students scoring a 3 or 4. The school got a new principal, Cheryl Plear, this school year. Students at the school improved last school year in mathematics but showed a decline in English.
"We're working on standards-based teaching making sure all the standards are covered, working on getting students more engaged with the instruction in their classroom, and they're also doing interim assessments and checking along the way to make sure students are really learning the skills they need," Kanawha school Superintendent Ron Duerring said of the efforts to improve the school's scores.
Charleston's West Side, which has a relatively high black population for largely white West Virginia, struggles with poverty, drug-related violence and other issues.
Kenna and Holz elementaries, both in South Hills, had the highest math and English proficiency rates in Kanawha. Compared to Mary C. Snow's 16 percent English proficiency rate and 19 percent math proficiency rate, Kenna had a 86 percent English proficiency rate and a 78 percent math rate and Holz had a 80 percent English rate and a 76 percent math rate.
"We have great teachers and hard-working students who really care about their education and focus on what they're taught in class," Kenna Principal Leah Earnest said.
When asked whether there's anything unique that set her school apart in these scores, Earnest mentioned "amazing parental support" and a great community that values its children's education. She noted the school's parent teacher organization raises funds to pay three part-time teachers for the school, two who work on math skills and one who works on technology.
High school scores on the separate National Assessment of Educational Progress, often considered a gold standard of testing, have indicated for years a nationwide stagnation in high school scores that contradicts the increasing NAEP scores in earlier grades. On West Virginia's Smarter Balanced results, statewide high school math proficiency rates are far below the rates for earlier grades, especially elementary grades, and high schoolers are taking less than half the time on the test Smarter Balanced has estimated them to take.
George Washington High, another South Hills school, had Kanawha's highest high school math proficiency rate, at 44 percent, and had the third-highest English proficiency rate, at 70 percent, of all county schools. In contrast, Sissonville High School, led by 2016 secondary schools state principal of the year Ron Reedy, had the lowest English rate of all Kanawha high schools, at 35 percent, and the lowest math rate of all regular Kanawha schools, at 12 percent.
Reedy said he wasn't aware of the math rate until a reporter called. He said he has had the data since August and perhaps missed the rate, but knew the school wasn't doing well.
He said he and his English teachers are "mystified" by the English rate, but feels the math rate is attributable to two ninth grade math teachers being gone for much of last school year due to maternity leave and another issue he declined to specify.
"We have some new math teachers this year that are very positive, very encouraging and they're really buying into the Common Core math curriculum," Reedy said, and he said they're coming to work regularly.
Like Duerring and the state Association of Secondary School Principals, Reedy supports leaving Smarter Balanced and using ACT's assessments, which Reedy said offer students "skin in the game."
"It's not valid, and I don't think it's fair," he said of Smarter Balanced, though he later said, "I don't want to make excuses, what I want to do is solve the problem and go forward."
William J. Mathis, managing director of the University of Colorado-Boulder's National Education Policy Center, said "standardized tests measure socioeconomic status much more than they do academic achievement," noting kids face things like homes in discord and high-crime neighborhoods. But he said socioeconomic status also is the biggest factor in other academic measures, like graduation rates and grade point averages.
"It's the most important thing as far as accounting for achievement that you'll find," he said. He said he believes standardized tests are essential because "that's what tells you what the difference is in the first place," but said because research indicates school effects account for only about a quarter of test scores, only larger economic approaches - increasing the minimum wage, etc. - will lift achievement.
"We know we have had these disparities for 30-50 years," Mathis said. "What's happened is we just don't do anything about it as a society."
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.