Clayton students are accustomed to hearing about CHS’s impressive standardized test scores, but just how significant are these scores?

Last year, CHS students earned impressive scores on Missouri’s new End of Course Exams (EOC). Students ranked first in St. Louis County in Biology and second in English II.  In addition, students also met AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) goals for both mathematics and communication arts.

One particularly notable success in CHS’s test scores was that CHS made AYP in every subgroup. “Subgroups” divide students by income, race, and other factors.

Many schools had very high overall test scores, but failed to meet AYP for some of their subgroups.  Despite CHS’s overall success, the Clayton District as a whole failed to meet AYP in math for two subgroups

Principal Louise Losos is pleased with the CHS students’ performance on these tests.

“I was excited about our scores because we had no baseline data and we had done nothing special to prepare for them,” Losos said. “I mean, our teachers prepared but we had nothing specifically for them. I thought that our students did extremely well across the board and that’s very exciting and then we can build on that.”

However, in spite of CHS students’ success with the format of the EOCs, the structure of these tests is different from what CHS students are used to. CHS teacher Adam Dunsker teaches English II and noticed that some of his students struggled with the format of questions on the test.

“I thought the essay questions were deliberately vague in some cases,” Dunsker said. “I imagine they’re concerned about struggling students and trying to keep the topic open.  I felt like, for our students at Clayton, we would have benefitted from more clear direction.”

Despite the difference between CHS assignments and EOC questions, Dunsker believes the Clayton English Department is teaching a strong writing program.

“I think that students did really well,” Dunsker said. “The biggest issue was just those moments of hesitation for students getting started. Our writing program is very strong; our students do well on the test.”

Dunsker also stands behind the CHS curriculum’s ability to prepare students for college in a way not demonstrated on EOC Exams.

“I think that we do a good job of letting students know what skills they need, and I think that we, as teachers, try to do a good job of clarifying the skills that we expect to see,” Dunsker said. “I feel like the test, by acting as though the question was wide open, gave the students a task that doesn’t seem to match our expectations of what students need when they get into college and beyond.”

Losos also stands behind Clayton’s policy of placing learning as the highest priority with regards to the curriculum.

“There are districts that plan their curriculum around the MAP test, now End of Course Exams,” Losos said. “And schools like Clayton, where we try and find the best possible curriculum and believe that out students will do well as a result.”

This strategy apparently seems to be working, as Clayton’s classes tend to be more effective because their main focus isn’t simply teaching students to only perform well on standardized tests.

Although Losos is proud of CHS’s scores in the latest round of tests, she still looks forward to continuing success and improvement on last year’s scores.

“My plan is to have the English department review the data, to dig into it, to find where is there a strand that we did poorly on,” Losos said. “And that they would then focus on that.”