Achievements for the ILEARN results were discussed during the Warsaw School Board meeting Monday.
Four sixth-grade students, Kaiden Bradford, Tenley Silveus, Dominick Tran and Gemma Cox, were acknowledged for their results of the test they took last year. They showed high growth and scored a 4, the highest level, on either their English/language arts, math or both assessments.
The four students were part of Grant Hendrikse’s fifth-grade class at Madison Elementary School. Special recognition was given to Hendrikse’s class as a whole as 88% of the class passed in the English/language arts test. Twelve of the 23 students scored a 4. One hundred percent of the class passed the math test, with 21 of 23 scoring a 4.
Hendrikse said the class worked really hard. “They’re hungry, they wanted it” and had perseverance to do well on the test. He called the class a special group of kids.
Deputy Superintendent Dr. Dani Barkey and Chief Technology and Data Analytics Officer Kyle Carter talked about the ILEARN at the school corporation as a whole.
Carter said the test is largely summative, which is an assessment designed to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit and/or learning providing comparisons against standards and benchmarks.
Test results aren’t received until after the school year is over, he said, but ILEARN is good to make comparisons with other school corporations and even grades or buildings in the same school corporation.
Carter also showed English/language arts ILEARN scores by school and compared them to the state average. Warsaw Community Schools, as a whole, was above the state average, with a couple exceptions. One of the exceptions was fourth grade, which was listed as 34.1 for WCS with the state average being 40.3.
Carter said the test does allow educators to identify which students need help, but it doesn’t necessarily identify the gaps in learning.
Barkey said WCS was trending up. The school corporation will continue focusing on data-driven instruction, as well as early literacy.
In a provided news release, Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert said, “All of our schools consistently prioritize academic excellence and employ innovative teaching approaches to empower our students for success. We commend the collaborative efforts of teachers, parents and students, which have significantly contributed to our ILEARN assessment results."
Later in Monday’s meeting, Warsaw Adult Education (WAE) was also highlighted.
David Bailey, Gateway principal, said life happens to people and WAE tries to fill the gaps in the community.
WAE is funded through the Department of Workforce Development and offers free high school equivalency classes and free English language learners classes, as well as some other classes. WAE also works with the Kosciusko County Jail Chemical Addiction Program, he said.
Rick Swaim, career coach counselor, said 75 people are expected to enroll in some type of programming the week of Aug. 21 and WAE has a wide age range of people in WAE’s programing with the average age being about 25. The group meets in the basement of Ivy Tech Community College.
High school equivalency teacher Diana Clark said there were 166 students in 2022 with 92 graduates. The English language learners (ELL) has seen a 400% increase in enrollment.
The 2018-19 budget was $125,000 and the 2023-24 budget was $240,000.
Clark said she thinks WAE is a huge benefit to the community.
Instrumental Machine & Development (IMD) owner Todd Speicher talked about how IMD had hired six Hispanic people who didn’t speak English. He contacted WAE, who said there were spots available in their ELL programming.
He said it has gotten to the point where they don’t use translation apps to communicate with each other. He said communication is very important. He said the workers all have value; it’s just language and communication is the problem. The ELL program has helped with that.