AMARILLO, TEXAS -- School may be out for the summer, but early test results for the new STAAR and EOC tests are in.
Some of those results came in on Friday and both Amarillo and Canyon Independent School Districts reported numbers for freshmen that took the End Of Course exam.
Canyon freshmen surpassed state averages in every academic department including Algebra I, Biology, English Reading I, English Writing I, World Geography and World History. CISD Communication Coordinator said school administrators are extremely happy about those results.
"This is a transition year and we are very pleased with the results. We are above the state average in all areas and well above the state average in most of them so we're very pleased with out students performance," she said.
2012 CISD EOC Results:
ALGEBRA I: State -- 83%, District -- 91%
BIOLOGY: State -- 87%, District -- 89%
ENGLISH READING I: State -- 68%, District -- 78%
ENGLISH WRITING I: State -- 55%, District -- 63%
WORLD GEOGRPAHY: State -- 81%, District -- 90%
WORLD HISTORY: State -- 43%, District -- 69%
Amarillo ISD freshmen didn't fare as well, falling below the state averages in World Geography, English I Reading and especially English I Writing, with only 47 percent of those students meeting the minimum requirements. AISD was unable to comment about these results on Tuesday.
2012 AISD EOC Results:
ALGEBRA I: State -- 83%, District -- 84%
BIOLOGY: State -- 87%, District -- 88%
ENGLISH READING I: State -- 68%, District -- 62%
ENGLISH WRITING I: State -- 55%, District -- 47%
WORLD GEOGRPAHY: State -- 81%, District -- 79%
ProNews 7 also spoke with Sarah Chase, a local mother who home schools her children and still had all three of her boys take the EOC and STAAR exams as well. Although she didn't have her results back yet on Tuesday, she said she and her kids felt confident about their performance on the tests.
"Most of them finished them in about half of the amount of time that was given to them. I think they came out feeling very good about it," said Chase. "We don't have the STAAR results back yet, I know some of the public programs and districts do but I can tell you from past experience home-schooling that most home-schoolers do at or above average for their state exams."
No district reported perfect numbers, though, something Bertolino said CISD is always working to improve.
"We're very pleased with the results but there's always room for improvement so right now we're reviewing all of the scores and we're going to see what our areas of weakness are," she said. "We're really going to focus on curriculum and instructional strategies and those area and we hope that out students will continue to improve on the exams."
Students who did not pass the tests and meet the minimum requirements this year are already involved in summer school programs to help get their grades up, Bertolino said. They'll have another chance to take and pass the test in July.
