ACT scores discussed

Hot Springs County School District #1 Board of Trustees met Aug. 15, the last meeting before the start of the new school year.

Laurie Graves, principal at Ralph Witters Elementary, gave a presentation to the board on how summer school went this year with the recent financial cutbacks.

Graves said it was a little different, but Kinder Camp had a good three days focused on letter and word recognition. There was a 90 percent attendance rate for the little ones, which is a great turn out.

First through fourth grades had almost a 100 percent attendance rate for the full six days.

They used a blended learning approach, mixing up the kids across the grade levels rather than keeping them to their individual grades. In addition, they worked on a business model, learning how to use power tools and math to put together lemonade stands.

Once the stands were completed, the students took them to various areas in town and used their math skills for counting money and making change at their stands.

“The teachers had a mixture of ages,” Graves said, “and they all felt it went swimmingly, collaborating between the different age groups.”

Next on the agenda was high school principal Breez Daniels, who presented to the board how they used recent student and ACT data from the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) to build the student’s schedules and smart goals for the 2017-2018 school year.

Daniels said they looked at the grades from freshmen to incoming seniors, noticing an up and down trend in English as well as the other core subjects throughout their school years, and use that data to determine if students are on the track for a Hathaway Scholarship.

When the junior class takes their ACT tests, a score of 21 is “in the money” as far as the scholarship is considered. GPA is, of course, part of the equation, but some of the students were estimated to come in short of the 21 score to qualify for one of the scholarships.

However, looking at their historical record, the classes are all up and down, making it difficult sometimes to pinpoint if they’re going to qualify or not.

Daniels said 44 percent of the incoming seniors are scoring 21 or more.

One area they are going to be more diligent in is allowing students to take dual-credit courses. Daniels said they need to make sure students are going to meet the 21 cutoff before being allowed to take the advanced classes.

“Our school improvement plan is ready to roll,” Daniels said, “and teachers have been working together to get the goals defined. They chose four goals based on data from the past few years, including ACT data.”

Daniels noted there are a smaller number of electives that will be available for the year, so everyone should be aware the classes are going to be full.

Breaking down the numbers, comparing HSCHS to the state averages per the WDE report, Thermopolis ninth graders scored an average of 427.9 in English, compared with the state average of 428.1.

In math, the ninth graders had an average score of 425.8 versus the state average of 425.4, and in reading, they scored a 421.9 compared to the 422.7 state average.

In English, the 10th graders posted average scores of 428.2 compared with the state average of 427.1.

They also showed a 422.9 in math while the state average score was 427.1. Reading scores came in with an average score of 421.2 versus the 423.9 state average.

Using ACT scores of the 11th graders shows an average 19.7 score in English for Thermopolis juniors while the state average is 18.6. In math, our students scored an average of 18.8 compared to the state average of 19.5.

Our science scores outpaced the state average with our students scoring 20.5 versus the state average of 20.2.