The Oregon Department of Education released At-A-Glance school and district profiles from the 2023-24 school year Thursday, and Banks held steady or improved in nearly all of the six metrics the state measures in the profiles.
In a phone call with the Banks Post, Banks School District Superintendent Brian Sica went over the numbers, offering insight into how the district is tackling student success and offering clarification on why two numbers the state looks at are not what they seem.
Addressing the overall uptick in numbers—regular attendance, on-time graduation rates, students on track to graduate, third grade English language arts, and eighth grade mathematics—Sica credited school staff for the improvements, and said there was more to be done.
“While we’re exceeding the state average, our expectations are a lot higher, and we’re going to continue to work to grow to meet our own goals,” Sica said.
The English language arts metrics for third grade and mathematics for 8th grade students area of the At-A-Glance profiles deserves a nuanced look, Sica said.
At first glance, the statewide averages—and even Banks’ higher percentages—are surprisingly low in these areas. For third grade English language arts, the statewide average is 40%, while Banks’ is 43%, a 1% increase over the previous school year.
For eighth grade math, the statewide average is 27%, while Banks’ is 31%, a 1% increase over the previous school year.
“Students meeting state grade-level expectations” is what the state says, but an important piece of the puzzle is missing. Families can opt their students out of those assessments, and those students are counted as having failed the assessment in the reported data.
“In Banks, we actually have a fairly high amount of families that opt out of those exams,” Sica said.
More than 150 students that would be eligible for the exams choose not to take them, Sica said.
“Completely within their right, nothing wrong with that, of course,” he said.
“What we do, is we measure literacy and math every single grade that students are with us in Banks, and we use different indicators,” Sica said.
He said that around 83% of kindergarteners met district literacy goals in the 2023-24 school year.
“We’re really proud of that, and some of those kind of details aren’t found on the At-A-Glance profile,” Sica said. “And boy, it’s hard to understand and use those numbers when you have so many people not taking them,” he added.
Internally, the district uses their own data to gauge where students are at in every grade level. Sica shared the data with the Banks Post in an email. View it online here.
Attendence
In the 2023-24 school year, the Banks School District saw a 6% increase in attendance over the prior year, but Sica said it wasn’t yet back to 2019 levels. The statewide average in 2023-24 was 66%, while Banks topped that at 68%.
“Our attendance is not back to where it was pre-pandemic,” Sica said.
“But we are making tremendous gains especially in our k-8 students in getting them closer to pre-pandemic levels,” Sica added.
He said the district measures attendance every quarter.
He said district surveys of staff, students, and community members indicate that satisfaction of how well the district is doing is increasing, leading to higher attendance rates.
“We know that student attendance is directly correlated to their performance and we really need to be as close to 100% of students being regular attenders,” he said.
A regular attender is defined as someone who only misses 10% of the school year.
“We’re just nowhere near that right now, and so we really do need to get that attendance up because we need kids learning as much as they possibly can while they’re here with us,” Sica said.
Graduation rates
The Banks School District has a high graduation rate of more than 95%, exceeding the state average of 85%.
“I just think that’s testament to our entire staff from kindergarten all the way through to those final years of 12th grade,” Sica said.
He credited the foundational skills that Banks students learn in elementary and middle school grades before they even reach high school, and praised the high school staff who work with students closer to graduation.
“They never give up on a student,” he said.
“I just think it’s a complete team effort how well our staff here is able to really work with any challenge or opportunity,” Sica added.
The single statistic of the six main At-A-Glance data points that saw a decrease was the five-year completion rate, which dropped a single point in 2023-24 from 94% to 93%. The state average was 87%.
Sica said because the number of students at the Banks High School on a five year track to graduating are so small, the one percent drop reflects a single student.
“We’re going to worry more about the individual student and less about where that percentage is,” Sica said.
View the rest of the data, including school level information and other district data online.
Chas Hundley is the editor of the Banks Post and sister news publications the Gales Creek Journal and the Salmonberry Magazine. He grew up in Gales Creek and has a cat.
