The results of the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), which is designed to measure scientific literacy and inquiry, show that 44 percent of fourth-graders in Vermont scored as proficient or higher, which is down 3 percentage points from last year. In eighth grade, 25 percent were proficient or higher, which is down 7 percentage points from 2013. In 11th grade, 30 percent were proficient or higher, which is down 1 percentage point from last year.
Of the fourth-graders at Fayston Elementary School, 6 percent scored proficient with distinction, 72 percent scored proficient and 22 percent scored partially proficient. At Warren Elementary School, 8 percent of fourth-graders scored proficient with distinction, 46 percent scored proficient and 46 percent scored partially proficient.
Of the fourth-graders at Waitsfield Elementary School, 88 percent scored proficient and 13 percent scored partially proficient. At Moretown Elementary School, 29 percent of fourth-graders scored proficient, 64 percent scored partially proficient and 7 percent scored substantially below proficient.
At Harwood Union Middle School, 3 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient with distinction, 34 percent scored proficient, 55 percent scored partially proficient and 8 percent scored substantially below proficient. At Harwood Union High School, 6 percent of 11th-graders scored proficient with distinction, 30 percent scored proficient, 30 percent scored partially proficient and 33 percent scored substantially below proficient.
"While some individual schools are doing very well, we are not satisfied with these scores," Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe said of the 2014 results. "Unfortunately, we have not seen scores improve over several years' worth of data. This suggests that instructional time for science may be getting squeezed out in some places due to the federal emphasis in the No Child Left Behind Act on English language arts and math," she said.
This is the seventh year of administration of the NECAP science assessment, which combines scores from multiple choice and short answer questions with results from an inquiry task that requires students to analyze and interpret findings from an actual science experiment. Rhode Island and New Hampshire, Vermont's partners in the NECAP consortium, also saw a similar drop in reported scores.
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