By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
LAKE ORION — During its meeting on Feb. 8, the Lake Orion Community Schools Board of Education received the district’s annual presentation on mid-year student achievement data.

Joining the board to give the presentation was district data specialist Kirk Webber. The data presented was collected from nationally normed benchmark assessments in reading, math and Social Emotional Learning including aReading, aMath, SAEBRS (Social, Academic and Emotional Risk Screener) and mySAEBRS screeners.

Reading
According to district data, in grades K (kindergarten) through eight, there was an overall one percent increase (from 74 percent to 75 percent) in reading proficiency in the fall.

“Over the years, it seems like this (proficiency percentage) normally rests somewhere in the mid-70s,” Webber said. “It had been a little higher before COVID and we keep kind of, post pandemic, getting back to where we were.”

Over a three year comparison, the 75 percent proficiency is a 15 percent increase from the winter of the 2020-21 school year.

Data also showed that there was a shift from the eight percent of students being high risk for not meeting proficiency benchmarks in the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, to seven percent being high risk by the winter semester that same school year.

Math
District data also shows that there was a one percent increase in proficiency from the fall, up from 74 percent to 75 percent.

As far as a three year comparison, the 75 percent proficiency in math is a two percent increase from the 73 percent proficiency in the winter of the 2020-21 school year and a one percent increase from the winter 2021-22 school year.

“The math going up is actually encouraging. It may be just one percent but each of those certain kind of milestone grade levels, when they get into multiplication and those kinds of things, that’s actually encouraging,” Webber said.

Additionally, at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, eight percent were considered high risk of not meeting proficiency benchmarks; compared to just six percent marked as high risk by the winter semester of 2022-23 school year.

Testing
With spring testing on the horizon, Webber pointed out that a majority of testing takes place in April which includes the M-STEP, PSAT and SAT.

Attendance
According to Webber, LOCS has recently made it an overall goal to increase attendance across the board.
In grades 9 – 12 at LOHS, attendance increased from 71 percent in 2022 to 93 percent in 2023.

This increase seemed to be a trend across the district with middle school and elementary school average daily attendance increasing across the district from 82 percent in 2022 to 90 percent in 2023.

High school
In tracking high school achievement, the district has three focus areas: ELA/Math achievement, Advance Placement (AP) classes and mySAEBRS.

According to data provided by LOCS, both ninth and tenth grade saw a dip in ELA (English Language Arts) grades during the first semester of the 2022-23 semester with an average grade of 77.4 percent at the ninth grade level (down from 85 percent in 2021-22) and 86.5 percent at the tenth grade level (down from 88.4 percent in 2021-22).

In math, both ninth and tenth grade students improved their grade point percentage with 84.9 percent at the ninth grade level (up from 84.5 percent in 2021-22) and 83.5 percent at the tenth grade level (up from 82.7 percent in 2021-22).

Webber also informed the board that AP registrations are up from previous years with more than 650 exam registrations as of Feb. 1. Last year, LOCS was averaging about 508 AP exam registrations.

The mySAEBRS screener was originally planned for Jan. 25, however a snow day the day of pushed the screener back to Feb. 6 and did not allow adequate time for Webber to fully review in time for his presentation.

Webber is expected to review SEL data district wide with the board during his end of the year student achievement presentation. The final screening for students is expected to take place in May.