Chicago-area Catholic school students exceed expectations on standardized assessments
Despite fears of students falling behind because of the COVID-19 pandemic, an assessment of nearly 7,400 students at Chicago-area Catholic schools found students, especially those from economically disadvantaged communities, exceeded expectations, officials said this week.
Of the 7,382 students who took the i-Ready exam in the fall of 2019 and fall of 2020, the majority in kindergarten through second grade, students performed on average at 105% of the expected learning growth in math, and at 130% in reading, said Jim Rigg, superintendent of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic schools.
The pilot program, which aims to track student growth from year to year and is administered three times a year, tested around 17% of the 45,000 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade enrolled at 162 archdiocese-run Catholic schools in Cook and Lake counties, Rigg said.
While students in grades three through eight were slated to take the ACT Aspire test last spring, Rigg said those assessments were canceled after schools were closed in mid-March and students moved to online learning.
“I was uncertain what to expect, given the complexity of the pandemic, but I was delighted to see the results, and that students had grown by one grade level, and outperformed the national norms,” Rigg said.
Rigg said the Catholic schools’ positive assessment results are rewarding given the findings of a national study released in December 2020 by McKinsey & Co.
The study found schools with predominantly white students who took the exam lost an average of one to three months of learning during spring 2020 COVID-19 school closures, and schools with predominantly Black and Latino students fell further behind, losing three to five months, Rigg said.
Based on analysis of data from the Curriculum Associates i-Ready platform, the study also found that students in the sample learned only 67% of the math and 87% of the reading that grade-level peers would typically have learned by the fall of 2020, he said.
“For me, our results reflect the rapid move to quality virtual learning in the spring, followed by our in-person instruction resuming this fall,” Rigg said, adding that around 80% of students are back in the classroom, with 20% selecting the remote learning option.
“We don’t engage students in high-stakes testing, but periodic assessments are helpful to our teachers so they can look at each student’s knowledge and growth, and understand how they can support them in the classroom, and help them reach their goals,” Rigg said.
Candice Usauskas, principal of St. Mary Star of the Sea School, in the city’s West Lawn neighborhood, said she is pleased, but not surprised, that her students — 95% Latino and 75% English-language learners — performed well on their recent i-Ready assessments.
“Our teachers are phenomenal ... and our school has been very proactive about finding professional development opportunities for our teachers so they can help our children,” said Usauskas, a graduate of the prekindergarten through eighth grade school, which enrolled around 190 students this school year.
“All of our students’ parents also sacrifice and make a financial and educational commitment, because they believe in and are looking for a strong Catholic identity, associated with faith, and an excellent, academic education for their children,” Usauskas said.
For the 2020-21 school year, student enrollment at the archdiocese schools is down 8.2%, or around 5,600 students, Rigg said.
Preschool enrollment dropped 37%, because some families opted to keep their younger children home during the pandemic, he said.
Nationwide, Catholic school enrollment has dropped 6.4% during the pandemic — the largest single-year decline in nearly 50 years, officials at the National Catholic Educational Association announced earlier this week.
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