Sharon Center School Principal Karen Manning recently told school board members she wished she could report last year’s Smarter Balanced test scores trended upward, but it’s just not the case. During a meeting last week, she noted the school is getting tremendous support from the central office and the teachers really care, “so we’re going to work through this.” The children in grades three to eight were tested last spring in the areas of language arts and math. All the tests are taken on the computer. With small classes and a continuing decline in student population (enrollment was 116 on Oct. 1), Manning said the performance of one or two students can have a significant impact on the percentages. She also pointed out Sharon Center School has 41 percent of its population on free or reduced lunch and 20 percent of the student body is in special education. Some students opt out of taking the exam and some of the scores are skewed because they are high-performing students, she said.

She said the state doesn’t publish Smarter Balanced scores of groups less than 20 because they are statistically unreliable, so Region 1 results were not published in the newspapers along with other districts.