White Sands School 5th grade teacher Kathleen Bowman instructs students using a Mimio Board.
White Sands School surpasses district reading and math average test scores
White Sands School recently surpassed middle of the year district averages in reading and math test scores.
WSS Principal James Dickerson said he attributes the scores to the excellent work of teachers and parent involvement.
“We are doing quite well thanks to our excellent teachers and staff,” Dickerson said of the K-8 testing assessment. “We are the only Pre-K to 8th grade school in the whole district.”
WSS middle of the year Star Reading average was 59.6 percent compared to the Las Cruces Public School’s middle of the year Star Reading average of 36.2 percent.
WSS middle of the year i-Ready Math average was 45.8 percent compared to the Las Cruces Public School’s middle of the year i-Ready Math average of 10.8 percent.
STAR Reading is a K-12 comprehensive assessment with all the insights needed to guide literacy growth and i-Ready Diagnostic Math is a diagnostic assessment for K-12 Math which includes a Growth Monitoring feature that enables teachers to evaluate progress.
In addition, WSS also increased their average from the beginning of the year assessment in reading from 22 percent to 59.6 percent for middle of the year and 22 percent for beginning of the year in math to 48.8 percent for middle of the year.
“We had quite a bit of an increase from the beginning of the year,” Dickerson said. “I attribute it to our teaching staff and parent involvement. We have parent involvement here at White Sands School like no other place. We have parents supporting their kids with their homework and events here at school.”
He said that when students see that school is important to their parents, they work hard.
Dickerson said he also expects to see an increase in the end of year averages especially since all the classes at the school recently received Mimio Boards, which allow for hands on instruction.
A Mimio Board is a full-featured interactive touch board with an erasable surface that doubles as a conventional whiteboard.
He said WSS is only the second school in the district to receive the boards. Teachers will be receiving professional development instruction on the whiteboards.
“I think the Mimio Board brings our school into the 21st century,” Dickerson said. “When I arrived here five years ago our students didn’t have laptops. When Columbia Elementary School closed, we went and got their desktop computers because ours were 14 years old and theirs were only 6 years old.”
Unlike other schools who receive Title 1 or other types of funding, WSS funding is based only on operational funding.
“The (LCPS) district was kind enough to give us all Mimio Boards for every classroom,” Dickerson said. “That has never happened here. We’ve been making the scores and achieving things with basically just elbow grease. This is going to make the teacher’s job easier and bring the learning environment up to date where kids learn more with visualization, so we are going to be able to tap into that and take it to another level.”
Dickerson said he is excited and thankful to the LCPS district for making that happen.
He said he is also thankful for the 90K grant they received for technology during COVID to provide every student in grades 3 to 8th with a laptop computer that was set up for them to learn from home.
By Miriam Rodriguez
WSMR Public Affairs