Vestavia Hills students still ranked 2nd in state on test scores

Students in Vestavia Hills City Schools stayed at a high level of performance on the most recent state English, math and science assessments.

The Vestavia Hills school district ranked second in the state in performance on the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program tests given this past spring, behind only Mountain Brook, when considering all three subjects together.

The percentage of Vestavia Hills students in grades 3-8 who were deemed proficient in math increased by 2.8 percentage points to 70.8% on this past spring’s tests, while the percentage of students proficient in English language arts grew by 2.3 percentage points to 87.8%, according to state data analyzed and shared by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama.

Meanwhile, science proficiency among Vestavia Hills students had a slight decrease (by 1.2 percentage points to 80.5%) this past spring. That dropped Vestavia Hills to third place in science statewide (behind Orange Beach), PARCA data shows.

Vestavia Hills Superintendent Todd Freeman said he is pleased with the scores on the state assessments.

“Our students are really strong,” Freeman said. But school leaders and teachers continue to look for ways to add to what the core teachers are doing to help students grow and improve, he said.

A prime example of that is how the district this school year added a teacher to each Vestavia Hills elementary school who will focus on science, technology, engineering and math instruction in a special STEM breakout class, similar to art and music.

There already are robust STEM-related classes at the middle and high school level, and this extends that further down into elementary schools, Freeman said.

“Math has always been a challenge on standardized tests,” Freeman said. “We’re just trying to find new and unique ways to make it more meaningful. Math is not always intuitive for people. It’s not something that comes natural to most of us, so getting into a place where they enjoy it in the elementary level will serve us well, I think.”

He already has heard a lot of positive feedback about the STEM classes anecdotally and is hopeful the enthusiasm will carry over into measurable test score results.

“It is just adding value to what we are offering our kids,” Freeman said. “With the number of kids pursuing STEM careers, it just makes sense for us to emphasize this at the earliest stages.”

Jason Bostic, Vestavia Hills’ district assessment coordinator, said the No. 2 state ranking speaks volumes and indicates that the city’s students are doing really well and keeping the bar set high.

A little growth each year is what district leaders want to see, he said. With science scores overall dropping slightly, school officials and teachers will continue looking for ways to improve in that area, he said. The new STEM classes in elementary schools are just another way to give students more opportunities, he said.

Bostic said he spends time meeting with district leaders and principals to review test score data, who in turn share data with teachers to look for ways to make improvements. They analyze it in terms of the district as a whole, the various schools, individual classes, individual students and various demographic groups.

There is still a significant achievement gap between white and Black students in Vestavia Hills grades 3-8. Almost 72% of white students were deemed proficient in math, compared to almost 37% of Black students, and almost 83% of white students were deemed proficient in science, compared to 46% of Black students.

However, those gaps are narrowing. The achievement gap between white and Black students in math went from 41 percentage points to 35 percentage points, and in English language arts it went from 31 percentage points to 24 percentage points. The achievement gap in science went from 37.7 percentage points to 37.1 percentage points.

Hispanic students in Vestavia Hills saw their science proficiency scores drop by 21 percentage points and English language arts proficiency scores drop by 5 percentage points, while math proficiency scores had a 0.2 percentage point gain.

Economically disadvantaged students in Vestavia Hills saw significant gains, with proficiency scores in math climbing 18 percentage points in one year, in science rising 17.4 percentage points and in English language arts rising 13 percentage points.

Brooke Wedgworth, a curriculum and instruction director who works with Vestavia’s elementary schools, said that while it’s not unusual for reading scores to be higher than math scores, district officials and teachers will continue to try to increase both. There is, however, a special push to make bigger gains in math, she said.

“Any little tweaks we need to make with our curriculum to make sure we’re doing everything we can in that area,” Wedgworth said. “Maybe continuing to teach through problem solving or using more math tasks. It gives kids a way to really apply their math instead of basic computation. It’s a higher level of math.”

All Vestavia schools showed increases in scores in at least two subjects, with the strongest gains occurring at Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights and Liberty Park Middle School.

Chassi Waddell, the instructional partner at Liberty Park Middle School, said she believes the improvement at her school had a lot to do with teachers being intentional throughout the year with students who needed support.

“We had a very detailed system of keeping up with data for those students,” she said.

The school already had a good support system for students who were really low on performance, but last year they made a special effort to target those “middle of the road” students who were close to proficient but needed just a little extra help to fill their learning gaps, Waddell said.

Teachers were identified to give those students some extra instruction at some point in the day, she said.

“We’re doing it this year on a bigger scale,” she said.

Teachers made intervention a priority and are now having two intervention instruction times each day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) instead of one, Waddell said. Though the times are a little shorter, it allows students to get help in two different subjects if necessary, she said.

“I have high hopes we’re going to see even more improvement,” she said.

Usually, students who need extra support in science can benefit from help with reading as well because a lot of science involves reading blocks of text, Waddell said. Similarly, when students learn how to analyze data using math in graphs and charts, that helps them in other subjects as well, she said.

At the high school level, the state measures proficiency based on 11th graders’ performance on the ACT.

The percentage of Vestavia Hills High School 11th graders this past spring who were deemed proficient in math climbed 2.8 percentage points to 71.8%, while the percentage proficient in science rose 5.5 percentage points to 77.5%.

The scores in English language arts didn’t fare as well this past spring. The percentage of 11th graders deemed proficient in English language arts (a mixture of English and writing scores) dropped 10.9 percentage points to 56.1%.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:31 p.m. on Dec. 6 to correct 2024 proficiency rates for Vestavia Hills City Schools students to 70.8% in math, 87.8% in English language arts and 80.5% in science.

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Statewide Scores

Overall proficiency

1. Mountain Brook: 83.5%

2. Vestavia Hills: 79.5%

3. Saraland: 77.3%

4. Orange Beach: 76.0%

5. Cullman: 72.9%

6. Homewood: 72.6%

7. Arab: 70.3%

8. Hoover: 70.2%

9. Trussville: 69.8%

10. Piedmont: 69.4%

ENGLISH proficiency

1. Mountain Brook: 88.6%

2. Vestavia Hills: 87.8%

3. Saraland: 84.9%

4. Cullman: 81.9%

5. Homewood: 81.2%

6. Orange Beach: 80.7%

7. Piedmont: 80.0%

8. Trussville: 79.4%

9. Hoover: 79.0%

10. Madison: 78.1%

Math proficiency

1. Mountain Brook: 78.2%

2. Vestavia Hills: 70.8%

3. Saraland: 69.2%

4. Orange Beach: 68.9%

5. Arab: 66.7%

6. Homewood: 64.6%

7. Piedmont: 64.4%

8. Cullman: 63.0%

9. Hoover: 62.1%

10. Muscle Shoals: 61.8%

Science proficiency

1. Mountain Brook: 84.0%

2. Orange Beach: 82.0%

3. Vestavia Hills: 80.5%

4. Saraland: 78.2%

5. Cullman: 75.7%

6. Hartselle: 75.0%

7. Homewood: 70.6%

8. Andalusia: 68.1%

9. Hoover: 67.8%

10. Trussville: 67.3%

SOURCE: Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama