TUSD students far from catching up on math progress lost in pandemic

Tucson Unified School District students are almost back to pre-pandemic English proficiency but will need “another year or two” to bounce back on math learning progress, administrators told the district board.

TUSD presented data, based on state standardized test results, showing the district was in line with statewide and local trends in terms of losses and gains in the pandemic years. But TUSD still fell short of statewide proficiency averages and lagged behind all but one other Tucson-area district.

Governing board members agreed TUSD must focus on improving English Language Arts (ELA) and math proficiencies, but couldn’t agree at Tuesday’s meeting on benchmark goals to set over the next five years.

“We’re coming out. We’re climbing out of this hole,” Halley Freitas, TUSD’s director of assessment and evaluation, told the board. “Our challenge is really to find how much we think is feasible to increase and then to keep that increase moving year over year.”

During the 2018-2019 school year, the district showed a 33% ELA proficiency among students in grades 3-8. That number dipped to 23% in 2021, and jumped to 27% by the 2021-2022 school year.

In math, TUSD showed a proficiency of 30% among third- through eighth-grade students during the 2018-2019 school year. That fell by more than half, down to 13% in 2021, then increased to 19% during the 2021-2022 academic year.

The most recent state assessment test, administered in the 2021-2022 school year, was the Arizona Academic Skills Assessment. During that school year, Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo noted, students were allowed to opt out of the state test if they wished to do so.

Trying to close gaps

According to data presented by the district, TUSD proficiency levels in ELA and math continuously fell second to last among districts in the Tucson metro area during the last five years.

Sunnyside Unified School District was at the bottom of that list while Catalina Foothills School District was at the top, according to charts TUSD presented Tuesday. TUSD, the largest school district in Pima County, serves about 42,000 students.

Compared to combined statewide averages of both ELA and math, Freitas said, TUSD elementary schools lagged behind by about 10%; middle schools fell behind by about 15%; and high schools fell short by about 6%.

Board member Val Romero said he wants to prioritize closing the gap between the district and the statewide proficiency as a goal for the next five years.

In third grade, for example, TUSD students showed a 29% ELA proficiency compared to the 41% statewide average. In math, the numbers were at 28% for TUSD and 39% statewide.

In seventh grade, TUSD had an 11% math proficiency while the statewide average was 27%. For ELA, those numbers were 26% for TUSD and 43% statewide.

“I hope that we can get those numbers up because, at this point, we are failing our students and our one job is to educate them,” board member Sadie Shaw said.

Board president Ravi Shah agreed the district needs to focus on increasing student learning, but said it was unfair to say the district is failing its students, since it deals with more issues of poverty than other local school districts.

“We go to schools, we see the effects of poverty and what it means for our students,” Shah said. “This isn’t an excuse. I’m not saying we just give up and not go from there.”

He said part of setting the new goals also means leaders need to figure out how the district could use its resources differently to improve academic achievement.

‘Number one, it’s expensive’

Romero said other local school districts, such as Amphitheater and Flowing Wells, also dealt with low-income demographics and still showed better performance than TUSD.

He suggested that the district start with focusing on K-2 grade levels to set strong foundations that will help those students show high proficiency from a young age, instead of helping them catch up once they’re older.

“Parents don’t want excuses. They want results,” Romero said. “It starts on a foundation. … I think that’s where we can focus some of that energy to improve these numbers.”

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Board members Jennifer Eckstrom and Shaw suggested the district should increase its partnerships with community organizations that could help with ELA and math tutoring, as well as help provide more one-on-one attention for students.

“I’d like the board to consider aiming high, trying new things, emphasizing physical books and one-on-one instruction, and then to increase our partnerships with organizations,” Shaw said.

In response, Trujillo said strategies like adding reading interventionists to schools and hiring highly qualified teachers have proven effective in achieving some of the highest learning gains in the district.

But, he added, those kinds of strategies can be expensive and beyond the district’s means.

“Number one, it’s expensive. Number two, the (teaching) applicants aren’t out there, which leads to the shortage,” Trujillo said. “When you have the amount of teacher vacancies that we have in the district, at key grade levels and schools, it’s challenging to overcome that.”

Measuring success

Eckstrom and Shaw said they didn’t like the idea of teaching students based on the state standardized tests.

“I just don’t feel like that’s the best way for students to learn,” Eckstrom said. “What are we doing to the mental health of these students if we’re constantly talking about test scores? I think we need to look at that, as well.”

Trujillo noted that TUSD has its own way of measuring success within the district, such as celebrating if a second-grade student goes into the classroom reading at a kindergarten level and leaves reading at a first-grade level.

“That’s growth. That, to us, is learning,” Trujillo said.

But, he added that the district still has to follow state mandates, such as testing students on the Arizona Academic Skills Assessment, which plays a big role in how schools are graded.

He also said that, in his experience in talking with other local superintendents, TUSD is the least restrictive district in terms of teaching to the test.

Trujillo recommended that the board set a goal of a 2-3% increase in proficiency per year, for a total of 10% to 15% in five years.

Shaw suggested aiming at a higher 5% per year, but no board member supported that.

“I think being realistic is also really relevant because we don’t want to be sitting here just despondent because we didn’t hit our goals,” Shah said. “We also don’t want to have goals that are too easy, but we want to have things that are realistic that we can actually achieve.”

He added that increasing proficiency by 15% would have a “huge impact” for students and would be an accomplishment that shouldn’t be dismissed.

But after back and forth discussions about how to help students succeed and how to measure academic growth, the five board members were unable to reach a decision about specific goals to set for the district.

In the meantime, Shah asked district staff to focus on reducing the gap between TUSD and statewide proficiency levels.

“I look forward to this item to be coming back to us in around six months or so and with some data points in there and some gold trends and start really making sure that we’re making an impact here for our students,” Shah said.