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Smaller classes increase
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- By Chris Murphy
- The Capital Times
State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Benson was scheduled to release results this morning in Milwaukee of the second-year analysis of the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program.
Intended to help elementary schools with high concentrations of poor students, SAGE provides up to $2,000 for each low-income student in grades kindergarten through third. The goal is to reduce the student-teacher ratio to 15:1.
"African- American students in SAGE schools outperformed African-Americans in the non-SAGE schools" |
Eighty schools statewide participate in the program, including Glendale, Mendota and Midvale elementary schools in Madison.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that first-graders at SAGE schools scored higher than students at selected non-SAGE schools in math, reading and language arts on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.
First-grade students took the test in October 1997 and again at the end of the school year in May 1998. Second-grade students took the test only in May.
The researchers said first-grade African-American students in SAGE schools outperformed African-Americans in the non-SAGE schools on the year-end test, though not on the fall pre-test.
They also said African-American students in the SAGE program made larger gains between the two tests than white students at SAGE schools, reducing the ''achievement gap.''
The researchers said second-graders in SAGE classrooms appeared to maintain an advantage over non-SAGE students observed on test scores from the year before, but they added that the advantage did not increase significantly on the most recent test.
The researchers tested students only at those 30 schools that have been funded by the SAGE program since its inception two years ago. There were 14 non-SAGE schools that served as the comparison group, including Emerson Elementary in Madison.
In Madison, Glendale Elementary is the only SAGE school whose students were tested. Test results on a school-by-school basis were not available.
The test score news comes at a time when the Madison Metropolitan School District is considering a sweeping plan to redraw school boundaries in an effort to reduce kindergarten, first- and second-grade classes districtwide.
Schools that have 40 percent or more low-income students would have K-2 student-teacher ratios of 15:1, and all other schools would have ratios of 20:1.
Posted February 1, 1999
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