The message from the William S. Hart Union High School District governing board was clear: We can do better.  District officials had just completed a presentation on the most recent round of state testing that was conducted in the spring. The results show that the district has a higher percentage of students meeting the state standards in English, math and science than both the state and the county – but also that over half of the district’s students aren’t meeting the state standards for math and science.  According to a news release from the Hart district, 63% of Hart district students met or exceeded the standard in English, while 47% did so in math and 44% did so in science.  In other words, 37% of the district’s students are not meeting the English standard, 53% are not meeting the math standard and 56% are not meeting the science standard.  Statewide, 47% of students did so in English, compared to 33% in math and 29% in science. At the county level, the number of students meeting or exceeding expectations in English was also 47%, while that number was 33% in math and 28% in science.  Those numbers make the Hart district look good relative to the county and the state, but compared to pre-pandemic scores, they are lower.   In 2019, the last year students took the Smarter Balanced Assessments in English and math, and the California Science Test, 73% of Hart district students met the standard in English, followed by 53% doing so in math and 44% in science.  Students in grades 3-8 take the English and math tests, while those in grades five and 8, as well as once in high school, take the science test.  “We’re catching up from COVID, obviously,” said governing board member Bob Jensen.  Dave LeBarron, director of curriculum and assessment, said there’s a gap that the district has tried to fill since the year-plus that students spent learning online, with the most learning loss noticed in math.  “There’s a price to pay, and I think, unfortunately, that price has been paid, but I think we’re recovering from it,” LeBarron said.  Governing board member Cherise Moore said it isn’t fair to look at the state and county as comparisons, especially when the Hart district typically uses “like districts” — districts with similar demographics, enrollment, etc. — when comparing salaries and other data.  “And so it seems appropriate to me that we would use like districts to learn from and to see how they are doing,” Moore said.  She added that she’s noticed similar plans in recent years to address some of the same issues with test scores, so working with other districts to see how they are addressing any learning gaps could be helpful.  Board President Linda Storli wondered if improving literacy overall would help with other subjects, something LeBarron said would indeed be a boon.  According to LeBarron, in science, Hart district students do well in understanding information, but more work needs to be done in applying that to the practical questions and cross-cutting concepts, or how concepts can be seen across multiple topics.  Math is being addressed by using a “push-in” model for both algebra 1 and seventh-grade math. In that model, according to LeBarron, smaller groups of students are targeted during class time — there was not enough funding to hire enough teachers to cut classes in size — to fill the gaps that students may have.  “The goal is to create smaller learning environments where credentialed math teachers are interacting with smaller groups of students on targeted interventions for specific reasons,” LeBarron said.  A team has also been formed that will work to share best practices across the district so that all students can benefit from what has been found to work, according to interim Superintendent Michael Vierra.  Jensen also said that collaborating with the local elementary districts on what their students are learning, or not learning, could help to shape what they are taught once they reach the junior highs in the Hart district.  The post Hart district acknowledges growth needed in state test scores  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.