The Bastrop ISD board of trustees approved a set of goals surrounding the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, and a range of other categories throughout the district, with the 2024-25 District Improvement Plan.

The gist

During the Sept. 17 board meeting, officials set a goal to increase the number of students who pass the STAAR for math and reading to 50%—up from the 2023-24 goals of 44% and 47% respectively.

What's happening

Trustee Carol Armstrong asked if the district met that goal, questioning why officials increased it to 50% for math and reading if the goal was not met.

"We did not quite make the goal last school year," said Kendra Monk, director of leadership development and school improvement for BISD. "We did not meet our goal last school year. ... So, now we say, 'Let's make another goal based on the current state of our data.'"Zooming in

Per the DIP, three strategies will be utilized to achieve the goal of 50% for math and reading, including:

• Provide instructional leaders with ongoing coaching to support the implementation of instructional leadership systems. Campus leaders will work together to increase student engagement.
• Provide campus instructional leaders with best practice resources to promote student ownership toward measurable academic and behavioral goals. The goal is to help students understand how to track their personal challenges related to math and reading.
• Create a structure for districtwide classroom observation to implement high-quality instructional materials. Teachers and officials will work together to build a variety of strategies to upgrade instruction in the classroom.

What else?

Other goals outlined in the DIP for 2024-25 include:

• Reduce teacher turnover to 21%.
• Increase student attendance from 92% to 94%.
• Increase the number of graduates that are college-, career- or military-ready by 10%.
• Increase the number of parent and family engagement opportunities by 8%.

"These goals are directly attacking the COVID learning laws," board Vice President Chris Dillon said during the meeting. "The kids, as we see from the results, are still showing the losses of those two or three years. This [DIP] is an ideal solution to get the kids back up to those pre-COVID levels."

Looking ahead

Monk said data shows a decline statewide, and similar trends were seen in BISD and other nearby districts. She attributed this to several factors, such as writing assessments being evaluated by artificial intelligence.

"This method of scoring written responses for short answers and essays are first graded by AI, and only up to 25% are reviewed by human scorers," Monk told Community Impact.

Another contributing factor is a recent update requiring all STAAR assessments to be given online, which Monk said could pose difficulties for elementary students.

"We foresaw some score declines and proactively addressed this during the 2023-24 school year," Monk said. "We made instructional changes, applied a differentiated model of professional development, and implemented specialized strategies for our students and teachers. We anticipate these changes will show positive results in spring 2025."