Byron Schools ranked best in recent release

By Chris Johnson

Reporter

BYRON – Administration with Byron Community School District were recently notified of its standing on the path to excellence in education, courtesy of Common Core and PARCC testing result tabulations.

With a score of 52 percent, Byron Schools were found to have the best understanding of information, they should know, according to the Department of Education.

PARCC testing took root around 2010 with instructors beginning to adjust to the new way to test around 2011, according to information obtained through the educational-information providing website, parcconline.org.

This year, as was expected, as results were returned, some student’s scores struggled as new testing information was collected and interpreted, the “Common Core” way.

For some school districts, the results returned have not been very good. The percentage of students who meet or exceed the new State Standards is low, so low in fact, that all school districts across northern Illinois failed their first run, not even achieving a rate of over 50 percent of students at or above standards, with the exception being Byron.

That means a little over five of every ten students within the Byron School District are finding their learning to be at a level, no other schools have achieved, yet.

Pecatonica School District was the next highest finisher with a “readiness” ranking of 49 percent.

Math continues to be the reason most school districts have seen their numbers fall, some as low as 16 percent, as in Freeport or 23 percent, as it is within the Rockford School District.

Schools such as Harlem and Hononegah even received scores showing less than 36 percent of the students have reached or excelled past expectations.

The PARCC assessments are designed to help instructors and those charged with the responsibility of providing the correct, new way of learning.

The results are to help indicate the areas were students continue to struggle. They are designed to allow schools and their instructors the opportunity to provide the required information, according to what the test indicates a student should know.

It is designed to help parents understand where their child is and in what areas they will have to improve.

It further helps showcase specific areas of exceptional educational understanding in certain categories, such as English, Literature, Reading and Mathematics.

Area School Superintendents have expressed their concern over the scores, not to the degree that the education system, as a whole, is failing.

Principals and other Administrators are expected to now get the opportunity to review the testing information to help determine where their students need to go next.