Evanston/Skokie School District 65, like almost all school districts across the state, has retooled its reading, writing and math programs to help students improve on standardized tests.

For Q.T. Carter, Oakton Elementary School principal, that is only part of the way to raise the district’s Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores, which decreased by 2 percentage points overall in 2002.

“We need to focus on education at the home — we still have parents who think that education is only at school,” Carter said. “It’s not enough to tell them ‘go do your homework.’ They should turn off the TV, turn off the stereo, and sit down with (their child) and do it. There should be a district-wide effort to loop the parents in.”

While the district’s overall percentage of passing scores on the ISAT dipped to 66.5 percent from 68.4 percent in 2001, fifth-graders showed an overall improvement of 4 percentage points and third-grade math scores improved by 5 percentage points.

The test is administered to students in the third, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth grades in math, reading, writing, science and social science.

The district’s most significant drop in passing scores was in fifth-grade writing, which fell by 21 percentage points to 61.1 percent.

“We clearly need to strengthen our writing program so that achievement will come back up to the levels it has been traditionally,” said Paul Brinson, director of research evaluation and planning for District 65. “In the past couple of years, there has been a strong focus on the math and the reading components. Everybody agrees that there wasn’t as much emphasis on writing.”

He added that writing scores across the state also dropped, suggesting that the test itself may have been the cause for the low scores. But the district will be conducting workshops to help teachers refocus on writing skills, he said.

There are currently several districtwide programs to help students meet the state’s standards of achievement, including the “Everyday Math” program and a guided reading program. Individual schools can also administer their own programs.

At Oakton, 436 Ridge Ave., the school’s scores have been helped by spelling and reading programs used during the past three years, Carter said.

“We’ve also instituted block scheduling and changed teacher scheduling for smaller group instruction,” he said.

Oakton’s scores improved to 60.1 percent in 2002, an increase of 4.5 percentage points.

Despite the overall increase in scores for the district, some administrators are worried about the gap in racial minorities’ scores.

“When you put the scores together, it looks good,” said Lynn McCarthy, assistant superintendent for school operations. “But when you aggregate the data, you see most students performing high and the minority students much lower.”

Districts across the state with a racial make-up similar to District 65 have shown universal gaps in achievement, Brinson said.

To bridge this divide, the district is looking at extended day and extended year programs in addition to the direct instruction programs that already exist.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that each state ensure all of its students meet the state’s academic standards within 12 years. In Illinois, the ISAT is one of two tests used to establish statewide standards. The Illinois Board of Education established the target passing range for 2002 at 40 percent.

“The (federal law) is coming into play as an issue,” Brinson said. “We’re in the early stages and people are working diligently to meet the expectations.”