More Kiski Area students struggling during pandemic

Kiski Area School District officials continue to be concerned about significant drops in student progress compared to last school year at every educational level.

Principals at each school building have been reporting how students are faring during this pandemic school year at recent school board meetings. Students who have not been adequately engaged in online learning are hurt the most, and the number of students doing poorly often has doubled.

Kiski Area Intermediate School Principal Michael Cardamone on Monday shared data from seventh- and eighth-grade math and English assessments.

Though there were some declines from the 2019-20 school year to this year, students saw noticeable improvement from the first unit tests to second unit tests — and it was clear that students with low engagement, who didn’t participate in as much synchronous learning, were struggling the most.

About 13% of the school’s student population has been identified as “nonengaged” or “under-engaged.”

Like the high school data presented last week, Cardamone said there were more failing grades in core courses this school year compared to last at both the first- and second-quarter marks. The data showed 73 students were identified at the end of the first semester as being at-risk to fail the whole year, and 48 of them were signed up for fully remote instruction.

“I’m not saying that our 100% distance learning program is not working,” Cardamone said, noting 72% of all remote students are passing.

But, he said, there are some students the school is still struggling to engage with.

“A structured intervention program has been put in place to meet with under-engaging students and their families to help these students get back on track. We have a pocketful of kids we are working diligently to get plugged into our system.”

Among elementary school students, North Primary Principal Christine Ross said there have been some significant declines in the number of students reading on or above grade level, based on assessment scores from last school year and this year.

In the fall of 2019, Ross said, 81% of first-graders were reading at or above standards for their grade level. That percentage dropped to 51% last fall.

In second grade, the percentage dropped from 69% in the fall of 2019 to 38% last fall; in third grade, it dropped from 77% to 72%; and in fourth grade, 80% to 53%.

Winter assessment showed similar declines, especially in kindergarten (74% were reading at or above grade level in 2019 compared to 44% in 2020), second grade (75% to 55%) and fourth grade (71% to 50%).

Ross said the method of assessment changed this winter to a computer-based method, which could have affected the results. She said it also hasn’t been as easy this year for teachers to engage in guided reading with small groups of students — an important tool for younger students learning to read.

Brian Kutchak, South Primary’s principal, said adjusting to the new computer-based assessments may have created a “perfect storm” for students already struggling to adjust to the changing instructional models.

“When you’re talking about reading, it’s different than math. You have to do a lot of reading aloud, reading aloud with the teacher, and we don’t have that for a lot of students this year,” Kutchak said.

Benchmark tests given at the end of the second quarter show declining scores in English for all grades. Math benchmarks for some grades also saw declines, but they were much less drastic.

Nearly 70% of elementary students are in school buildings at least four days a week, Kutchak said.

At the upper elementary school, which includes fifth- and sixth-graders, there has been an increase in the number of students failing core classes and a decrease in students getting grades of 90% or above. Principal Brian Swartzlander said the number of students failing at least one class at the end of the first quarter rose from 70 students in the 2019-20 school year to 82 students this school year.

Likewise, the number of students failing two or more classes more than doubled, from 20 students last school year to 47 students this year.

At the end of the second quarter, the trend continued — 48 students were failing at least one class last school year, compared to 76 this year. Twelve students were failing two or more core classes at the end of the second quarter last school year. This year, that number increased to 34 students.

In a bit of good news, Swartzlander said more special education students in the upper elementary school have achieved grades of 90% or more in at least one of their core classes this school year.

“I think that’s phenomenal,” he said. “I think that’s testament to what our staff is doing with some of our most at-risk students and students that struggle academically.”

The upper elementary data also show rates of failure are significantly lower among students who are using hybrid learning models, as opposed to students who are fully online. Hybrid students are seeing increased improvement in their grades between the first and second quarters, but Swartzlander said, “We do feel like we need to address, more rigorously, the 100% online students.”

Swartzlander said administrators are implementing new “interventions” in the upper elementary school to target struggling students and hopefully improve the data by the end of the third quarter.