The School District of Lee County saw a 7.35 decrease in the number of third graders testing as proficient on their English Language Arts spring assessment, bringing the overall number to just over half.

Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jeff Spiro said the district had 95 percent of its students test for third grade ELA, a really strong participation number for them.

“The 2019 overall percentage of students proficient were at 57.67 percent and during this past year we were at 50.32 percent,” Spiro said.

The state percentage was 54 at proficiency.

A score of 3 or above on the Grade 3 Florida Standards Assessment English Language Arts test is the proficiency ranking required by the state for student promotion to fourth grade. The test focuses on key ideas and details; craft structure; integration of knowledge and ideas and language and editing. The key ideas and details focuses on comprehension, analyzing and summarizing information and concepts, while the craft structure portion of the exam has students interpret literal and non-literal words and phases.

A level three performance is considered satisfactory, “may need additional support for the next grade/course,” by the Florida Department of Education. Level four, proficient, is defined as “likely to excel in the next grade/course.” The fifth level, mastery, is defined by FLDOE as “highly likely to excel in the next grade/course.”

Level 2 is below satisfactory, “likely to need substantial support for the next grade/course:” and level 1 is below satisfactory, “Likely to need substantial support for the next grade/course.”

There were some contributing factors to the decrease in the number of students meeting the minimum promotion standard, which stemmed around what school looked like this past year with the various health protocols in place and learning models offered to families.

“Our jobs in our schools was to love our kids and make sure they were safe,” Spiro said.

He said it is easy to forget that a year and a half after the pandemic began, teachers are learning to teach in new models, as well as instructing students with new barriers in place.

Normally, when the district provides reading intervention, students travel to different teachers who are experts in different standards to receive that help, Spiro said.

This school year the students remained in “cohorts,” as movement was not allowed to occur.

There was also social distancing taking place in classrooms, which took away instructional strategies that students would typically see in the classroom, again in an effort to limit movement and proximity in the classroom.

Spiro said the resource teachers who are used to support intervention were used in other capacities during the last school year as they had to be used to cover classes where teachers were quarantined. This happened to ensure a certified teacher was in the classrooms.

“To our teachers out there, thank you for the work that you have done for students,” Spiro said, adding that despite what the previous year entailed “we did not drop as much as schools across the nation are seeing.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis said parents can take this as good news.

“On June 11, 2020, Commissioner Corcoran and I stood with our school district superintendents and said our schools will be open,” DeSantis said in a prepared statement issued earlier this week. “Throughout the year we continued to work with districts to get struggling students on campus full-time to stop learning loss and the possibility of widening achievement gaps. With overwhelming data to support our decisions, we stood firm for our students, families and their teachers. We can now say without hesitation that this generation of Florida’s K-12 students are positioned for success better than any other state in the nation.”

The School District of Lee County also allowed parent choice in what model they wanted their child to participate in — face-to-face, Lee Home Connect, or Lee Virtual School, which gave them the ability to change instructional models throughout the school year.

“We had kids move in and out through virtual and face-to-face and quarantine. It all had an impact on the overall scores,” Spiro said.

The district has already implemented strategies on how to increase those scores and provide both professional development for teachers and interventions for students.

Director of Teaching and Learning Dr. Bethany Quisenberry said they started professional development earlier this year as a way to prepare for the fall. In addition, the district also purchased a new reading program for all elementary students, in which teachers have begun professional development.

Literacy coaches have also been hired with each elementary school having one. Unfortunately this past school year they were not able to serve to their full function as they were used in the classrooms to ensure every classroom had a certified teacher.

There is also training being done on new resources available to teachers, officials said.

Coordinator of Teaching and Learning Elysa Clark said the professional development training that they are doing this summer and into the following school year is broken down into manageable chunks. The resources, which are integrated in the current instructional materials, are being utilized and specified for which groups and skills it targets the best.

“We are being able to get those students what they need to close those gaps and enrich those areas,” Clark said.

In addition, coaches have been identified for a team, which will include one representative in house for every grade level.

Quisenberry said the reading endorsement will change next year with all teachers in all grade levels required to have one.

Executive Director of Elementary School Development Shanna Fletcha said in preparing for the next school year, they are having intense strategic planning with each principal focusing on attendance, behavior, classroom success and drop out prevention. They will go out to each of the schools to meet for an hour to go through their specific plan.

Another piece of intervention is taking place this summer, as 1,626 third grades are participating in the district’s summer program — either virtual, or face-to face at three school sites. The virtual program is utilizing iReady, which provides an individual learning path for each student based on their assessment score, with teachers providing intervention through Zoom, Quisenberry said.

If, or when, a student struggles with a lesson, the teacher contacts them and provides a Zoom intervention. Quisenberry said this year there is a lot more interaction with more live lessons.

In addition, there are 427 third grade students participating in the face-to-face expanded learning program, third grade reading camp.

Spiro said with it being a very short summer, he encourages parents to support the love of reading with their child.

“Read a book of choice and interest. Read, read, read, but do it for the love of reading,” he said.

To help with inspiring youngsters to read, Quisenberry said second graders moving into third grade this fall are able to participate in Kids Read Now.

“All second grade students are receiving nine books mailed to their homes this summer,” she said.

They are adding activities and incentives for the students every week.

“Classroom teachers worked with the kids to choose books on their level and interest,” she said.

Spiro said they are really excited about the upcoming school year as they are restarting their academic engines.

“We cannot wait to get kiddos back to face-to-face instruction. Enjoy your summer and get ready,” he said.