By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Results of the new standardized test for the state’s thirdthrough eighth-graders are in, providing the data used to judge local schools under the controversial federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Hooksett’s students seem to have fared well compared to state averages of the number of students who scored “proficient” or better in the three tested categories – reading, mathematics and writing.

Auburn students tested well above state averages, while scores from Epsom, Pembroke and Candia students are comparable to scores statewide.

Scores in Allenstown are generally below state averages, though it’s not yet clear whether the district will face sanctions under No Child Left Behind.

The act requires districts, schools and even subgroups of students make “adequate yearly progress” in the subjects tested.

Consecutive years without adequate progress can ultimately lead to sanctions against local districts including implementing a state-approved improvement plan and required changes in academic programming. Penalties – the most severe of which is the potential overhaul of administration and staff – get stiffer the more consecutive years a district fails to make progress.

The state Department of Education plans to release adequate yearly progress results later this spring.

The New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP, test was administered earlier this year, replacing the New Hampshire Educational Improvement and Assessment Program test, which had been given only to the state’s third-, sixth- and 10th-grade students. The NECAP, in use also in Vermont and Rhode Island, will show how well students met the state’s new grade-level expectations the grade-by-grade criteria for students’ skills and conceptual and content knowledge.

NECAP results place students into one of four competency levels per subject – proficient with distinction, proficient, partially proficient or substantially below proficient. No Child Left Behind aims to make all of the nation’s students proficient or better in reading and mathematics by 2013.

Statewide, 66 percent of students this year hit the proficient mark in reading, while 62 percent met the mark in math. The NECAP also tests writing skills of fifth- and eighth-graders. Fifty percent of New Hampshire students were judged proficient.

Hooksett, Auburn and Candia Armand LaSelva, superintendent of Hooksett, Auburn and Candia’s SAU 15 said it’s difficult to process the recent results since this is the first year of NECAP testing.

“This is just the baseline data,” he said. “There’s nowhere to go but up. It’s the growth I want to see.”

The Hooksett School District has been labeled as “in need of improvement” under No Child Left Behind for multiple years without adequate yearly progress in mathematics.

The district officials have devised an improvement plan focused on mathematics, and it seems the plan may be already yielding results.

Sixty-six percent of Hooksett’s students tested proficient or better in math, compared to 62 percent statewide. Hooksett also well eclipsed statewide averages in reading and writing.

“Just being above state averages is not the point where I would like to see us settling in,” said LaSelva. “I want to see us significantly above those averages.”

Auburn students, who tend to respond well to standardized testing, produced some of the most impressive scores in the state. Seventy-five percent of students proved proficient or better in reading, while 72 and 65 percent met the mark in math and writing respectively.

Candia had 3 percent more students test proficient in reading than students statewide, but math scores were low, with only 54 percent meeting the mark.

LaSelva said he likes the new test since more students are tested annually, but warned about taking the results too much to heart.

“This is a snapshot,” he said. “It’s not the total measure of a child and it shouldn’t be the doall, end-all.”

Pembroke, Allenstown and Epsom Scores in Allenstown were significantly lower than statewide averages, with only 54 percent and 44 percent of students measuring at least proficient in reading and math respectively.

In Pembroke, a district labeled “in need of improvement, scores were comparable to state averages, but hampered by some below-average marks at Three Rivers school. Only 57 percent of Pembroke’s sixththrough eighth-graders tested at proficient or better in reading, while 56 percent met the mark in math. Just 44 percent of the school’s students were judged proficient in writing.

Epsom students tested similarly to students statewide in math and writing, and 69 percent of the district’s students met the proficient level in reading.

SAU 53 Superintendent Thomas Haley said he likes the newly established grade-level expectations as curriculum guides, but said it could take some time for the professional staffs at the three towns to adjust.

“Do we teach to the test?” SAU 53 Haley asked rhetorically. “That’s a double-edged sword.”

Haley suggested a rift occurs when school teachers and administrators have perceptions of what skills students should have and by when differs from the GLE’s outlined by the state.

“That’s always a discussion,” he said. “One of the things we have to do is separate the valid pedagogical analysis from what is just fear of change.”