The San Marcos CISD board of trustees discussed the district’s Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System (PBMAS) scores at a meeting Dec. 14 and may add staff to certain programs to address problematic areas.
In 2014, PBMAS, which reports annually on districts' and charter schools' performance in areas such as bilingual education, special education and career and technical education, found that 68.1 percent of students passed the math portion of the test. In 2014, 27.6 percent of students passed.
Tammy Maiorano, SMCISD special education director, said comparing 2015 scores with 2014 scores is not comparing apples to apples. In 2014, students with disabilities were able to take a modified state assessment test that she said more accurately reflected their learning progress. In 2015, all students took the same assessment.
“It’s a statewide problem that everybody is having to face. We’re all challenged with it. That’s why all the special ed directors are gathering and trying to come up with interventions.”
— Tammy Maiorano, SMCISD special education director
Districts across the state are dealing with similar dips in their PBMAS scores, said Hensley Cone, SMCISD director of secondary curriculum and accountability. Even so, SMCISD scores were about 10 points lower than the state average in many cases.
“There are two layers to this,” Cone said. “The state did not do well … but at the same time our kids didn’t even do as well as the state kids.”
The district is looking at how to bolster its special education program.
“It’s a statewide problem that everybody is having to face,” Maiorano said. “We’re all challenged with it. That’s why all the special ed directors are gathering and trying to come up with interventions.”
Trustee Lupe Costilla said she hoped the district would consider hiring additional staff members to address needs in special education and bilingual education. Costilla said she planned to request the item be added to the agenda of the board’s next regular meeting in January.
“We have here a problem that I think we need to address resources for in some shape or form,” Costilla said. “We need intervention at this point in time.”
Cone said when the district was notified of its PBMAS scores, teachers, principals and district staff gathered to form a plan—which includes teacher training and monitoring feedback for improvement—to address the deficient areas. That plan, which is about a month old, needs time to be acted on, but the district is in need of a larger plan to address special education and bilingual education scores, he said.
“While this addresses something for the short term, we need a longer-term plan,” Cone said. “I think we have to carefully study who we need and where we need them at, because we don’t want to just jump and hire people when in reality [the problem] may be an instructional thing.”
