MT. ZION, Ill. (WAND) — ACT scores hit a 30 year low this year as school districts struggle to improve academic achievement coming out of the pandemic. But new data shows some central Illinois schools are seeing big improvements in standardized test scores. WAND News visited the Mt. Zion School District to learn how they're bucking the nationwide trend and seeing success.
"The teachers do a great job of adapting the instruction to directly what the students need," Superintendent Travis Roundcount, told WAND News.
Flexibility has been the secret to Mt. Zion's success. The district has a Response to Intervention Program (RTI) which helps catch students who may be falling behind.
"We really focus on identifying those students. We have a class period at the end of the day called 'focus period'. So students are getting an enrichment, and if they need that extra help — we pull them out of the enrichment and put them in that intervention time," Bryan Marquis, a Mt. Zion High School math teacher, explained.
The RTI program, plus repetition in the classroom, is helping Marquis see improvements in standardized test scores while other districts have struggled.
"The district paid for us to have that professional development time so that we could put in those extra hours so we could really focus on — ok what types of questions are they going to see, how does that fit in to our curriculum," Marquis said.
The Mt. Zion High School Math Department is focused on ensuring their curriculum prepares high schoolers for standardized tests.
"Although some people will say 'we're teaching towards the test', the test is aligned to the Illinois state standards, so all we're doing is making sure that we're hitting those standards and preparing them for the concepts that they're going to see," Marquis told WAND News.
Roundcount said finding and keeping quality teachers has also been key to achieving district-wide goals.
"We also are able to retain the teachers because they're enjoying what they're doing and we're providing them the tools to be successful," Roundcount said.
Click here to see the Mt. Zion Illinois Report Card released Monday. You can also look at your district's report card and compare districts here.
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