For the Burlington Area School District – and in particular, Burlington High School – the overall goal for students in the district’s “Roadmap to Instructional Excellence” is to have all graduates college and career ready.
As part of that goal, Burlington High School Principal Eric Burling wants all students taking some form of testing for post-secondary education – whether it be for a four-year or two-year college, a technical college or even the military.
One of the most common assessments used is the ACT test score, and in late August, the district found its test scores for the 2012-13 score year were just a bit below the scores of 2011-12.
Burlington High School’s average composite score for the 185 students (58.2 percent of students eligible to take the exam) who took the ACT was 22.3 – .2 below the 2011-12 numbers.
Looking at the last five years, Burlington’s average composite score has fluctuated by .8 of a point – 22.4 in 2009, 21.7 in 2010, 22.4 in 2011, 22.5 in 2012 and this year’s number of 22.3.
Burling said that, with classes differing in goals and size, the numbers have remained steady.
“Our ACT scores are stable, both in our composite and in our percent of students taking (the test),” Burling said. “It’s a pretty flat line.”
Comparing Burlington to other schools in the Southern Lakes Conference, BHS is ranked fourth. Waterford had the highest average composite score at 23.1, while Lake Geneva Badger (22.6) and Westosha Central (22.4) followed.
BASD Superintendent Peter Smet said the goal is to not only improve the scores, but to have more students taking the test.
“What I would like to see is … more kids taking the ACT, and I want to see our (score) numbers increase,” Smet said. “And that’s hard to do when you have more kids taking it.”
Breaking it down
Burlington’s scores on the various portions of the test have not varied much over the last five years. The English score has ranged from a low of 21.3 (2010) to a high of 22.1 (2011), while the math score has been between 21.4 (2010) and 22.3 (2009, 2012).
For reading, it has varied from 22.0 (2010) to 23.0 (2009), and in science, from 21.8 (2010) to 22.7 (this year).
The number of students taking the test has remained roughly the same. While the 2013 number of 185 students is at the low in that five-year trend, Burling said much of that has to do with declining enrollment. BHS’s grade 12 enrollment (316 students) for 2012-13 was at its lowest since the 2001-02 school year (290)
Taking a look instead at the percentage of students taking the test (compared to the school’s fall grade 12 enrollment), 58.2 percent of students took the test in 2012-13. That is the highest it has been within the district since 2009-10, when 62.8 percent of students took the test. That group, however, finished with the lowest average composite score of the last five years.
Looking across the SLC
Comparing BHS to the other schools in the SLC, Waterford had a clear advantage, scoring or tying for the highest score in each of the various categories of the test.
Waterford also had the highest percentage of students taking the test at 79.1 percent.
Elkhorn was the next highest with 70.5 percent of seniors taking the test, followed by Westosha (63.1 percent) and Union Grove (60.2). Burlington (58.2), Wilmot (54.6), Badger (53.6) and Delavan-Darien (52.7) rounded out the list.
Burlington’s best placement among the SLC schools was in science, where it tied for second behind Waterford with a 22.7 average score (tied with Delavan-Darien). Its worst placement came in reading, where it was ranked seventh with an average score of 22.2.
Burling said the goal now is to bump up reading and writing education across the board – not just in English classes.
“We want to focus on our interdisciplinary learning,” said Burling, pointing to teaching students how to handle textbook reading, technical reading and science reading.
Focus on the core
What Burling also stressed was the importance of students taking the “core classes” – four or more years of English and three or more years of math, social studies and natural science.
“Students who take the core … those kids really did well,” Burling said. “And 78 percent of the kids who did take the test are in that sequence.
“My strategy as a building leader and as a staff, is to get that percentage back up,” he added.
Also encouraging to Burling is how the school’s scores related to the benchmarks of college readiness. The benchmark in English is 18, and BHS is at 21.8, while reading is 22, and BHS is at 22.2. For math, the magic number is 22, and BHS is at 21.9, while science is at 23 (college level biology), and BHS is at 22.8.
Also, compared to the country, BHS is well above the averages. The nation-wide composite score was at 20.9 for 2012-13, roughly a point and a half below BHS.
As much as the stress was on the ACT score – and the testing suite, as the district will have its first class of students taking the EXPLORE (eighth grade), PLAN (10th grade) and the ACT in 2015 – Burling also pointed out the “career ready” part of the equation.
“We know not everyone needs college to be successful,” said Burling, adding that students not looking at a two-year or four-year degree would be encouraged to take the ACT Work Keys, the military assessment test – the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery or ASVAB – or other appropriate assessments.
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