Three Great Falls Public Schools students received a perfect score on their ACT tests taken in March.

A perfect score on that standardized test is 36.

Beckie Frisbee, a curriculum coordinator, told the school board during their April 15 meeting that 29 students had also received advanced scores of 31-36, according to preliminary data.

Frisbee said that when she presented student achievement data to the board during a March work session, scores had dipped in recent years, but according to the preliminary data, every single component of ACT scores went up so far this year.

The composite score was 18.9, up from 18.6.

“That is not usually where we’re at,” Frisbee said of the preliminary scores. “It was an astounding year for ACT.”

The preliminary data is only for the students who took the test on March 25 at all three high schools.

She said other students took it on makeup tests, or tested over multiple days and testing is ongoing through April 17.

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Frisbee said she should have close to exact scores for GFPS students in about a month, but won’t have state or national comparisons for awhile.

Superintendent Heather Hoyer said Frisbee was dancing in the district hallways when she got the test data on April 11.

Hoyer said they were “very excited” and it was a good way to end the previous week.

During the board’s March 17 work session, Frisbee said the district had been using the ACT and pre-ACT for high school assessments.

In the past, the Montana Office of Public Instruction paid for both tests, but starting this school year, OPI no longer funded the pre-ACT test.

Frisbee said that previously, students took the pre-ACT with paper and pencil and it made sense to shift to the digital test.

Students who want to take the pre-ACT pay the $20.50 fee.

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Frisbee said in March that GFPS scores have been sitting around average for the last two years and she’d like to see the district do better.

Last year, for the English component of the test, the national average score was 17.8 and for GFPS it was 17.9.

For math, it was 19.1 nationally and 18.4 for GFPS.

“All of our kids hanging there at the national average, not just the college bound,” Frisbee said. “I think that’s worth celebrating.”

She said about 95 percent of juniors take the ACT.

The ACTs were just one component of student achievement measures district staff discussed with the board during their March 17 work session.

Hoyer said that the district had set a goal that 80 percent of students at all levels would show at least one year’s growth in learning.

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Rachel Cutler, curriculum coordinator, said the district uses common content assessments to assess learning that has just happened, looking at how well students are mastering their grade level content and skills for grades K-6, which “paints a picture of where students are.”

The district does a pretest of oral blending at the start of kindergarten to assess a student’s phonetic skills.

Most have about 26 percent proficiency when they come into GFPS, Cutler said.

At the end of second grade, the test silent reading comprehension since that’s when phonics has been taught and found a 72 percent proficiency.

Students spend third grade practicing those skills.

Data for middle school comes in different assessments later this year, Cutler and Frisbee said.

At the high school level, English language and reading informational text at the middle of 10th grade was 50.8 percent proficiency across the district, which was a clear indicator that work needs to be done on informational text skills, they said.

Literature proficiency was a bit better at 68 percent, according to GFPS data.

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In math, the district is using historical assessment data and using new MAST assessments for grades 2-6.

Cutler said over the last five years, starting with COVID, they’ve seen declines as the move through grades in math skills, but have seen some improvements in most grades since COVID.

At the high school level, they’re working to assess students who were remote after COVID.

The district used a platform with an assessment built in that isn’t included in the overall data presented during the March 17 meeting since they didn’t take the common content assessments.

Cutler and Frisbee said that intervention and support programs are intended to accelerate learning for students with content and skills gaps, target to specific student needs.

Those programs are for students who are struggling, not all students.

One of those programs is mClass that has a digital component and as students do their assignments, the software is constantly assessing and generating lessons specifically targeted to those students.

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Within the K-8 grade levels at three schools, 23 percent were in grade level materials at the end of September. By late March, they’d made progress and had a larger sample, with every students at Riverview, most at Morningside and West elementaries and some at North Middle, for a total of 930 students, participating.

Another program, Power Up, for grades 6-8, breaks language skills into word student, grammar and comprehension, the three key pieces students need to build on skills.

That program is helping move students to proficiency within their grade level.

Cutler said that the company provides professional development and some trainings have been done within school buildings. She said that teachers jumped into it at the end of September because they want to see students progress in proficiency.

Cutler said that 44 teachers are participating in LETRS, a training course designed by literacy experts, to help understand how to teach reading at a deep level.

She said that one teacher had reported seeing an improvement in students within a week since using the training.

Cutler said that two teachers had told her they didn’t think that teaching reading was valuable before, but because of the LETRS program have realized its importance and added it back into their lessons.

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Cutler said the LETRS program is a two year process, first focusing on how the brain learns to read, processing language and visual cues, which is all complex and important to understand as teachers.

The second phase focuses on the phonological pieces.

She said some GFPS students in third and fourth grade are struggling to read because they don’t have that awareness.

Lance Boyd, assistant superintendent, said that when he was a teacher, there were intentional ways of teaching reading that teacher education programs had shifted away from those basics but were now shifting back.

Bill Bronson, school board member, asked if the struggles in reading was the lack of understanding the science of reading, or how kids gain knowledge today.

Cutler said all of it factored in and Frisbee said it was also impacted by changes in how teachers are educated.

Amie Thompson, school board member, asked how teachers were doing with the LETRS program.

Cutler said that she gets feedback from elementary teachers who feel their students are improving. 

At the end of the second quarter, they focused on it for teacher training more wanted to get the training, so they’ll be doing it again, she said.

Kim Skornogoski, school board member, asked if students in college teacher training programs were learning that program.

Cutler said that MSU Northern and MSU Western were starting to incorporate it into their programs.

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Boyd and Mainwaring said it depending on the college program.

Hoyer said a bill was going through the Legislature focused on the science of reading and if approved, she said that would likely be incorporated into the curriculum at Montana universities.

Boyd said that GFPS had submitted for a literacy grant through OPI in March.

It’s the Montana Reads grant, and the last of the U.S. Department of Education grants that were awarded to the states to target literacy instruction.

Boyd said that OPI was using those grants not just to target those struggling, but also those districts that were actively working to address it, as GFPS was.

He said 31 grants had been submitted as of mid-February for $50 million in available funding.

GFPS applied for about $2 million to use for targeted professional development directed toward the science of reading training and resources The funding would allow the district to bring in content area experts and consultants to increase proficiency.

“We’re very hopeful that we’ll get it,” Boyd said.

He said the grant is available once every year from the state and this is the last iteration of a federal grant.

Cutler and Frisbee walked school board members through the benchmark assessments, which are MAP and MAST.

Cutler said changes were made to the MAP assessment due to student performance declines nationally.

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It’s most useful in looking at a snapshot at one point and setting growth goals for students.

MAST is used through K-8 grades to assess what was recently taught and is more frequent than the end of year test. It only assesses the standards of that grade level, she said, and is still in the field test form so they’re collecting student and classroom data, but working to get good school and district reports.

The MAP assessment is used district wide for grades K-12 and compares projected growth to actual growth from fall to winter.

The assessment showed growth in math that students met or exceeded projected growth at every grade level.

“This is great news,” said Amie Thompson, school board member.

Jackie Mainwaring, assistant superintendent, said they’re hoping to “continue to do better.”

Cutler said they’re hoping to see similar improvement in reading and that this is the third year with the new English and Language Arts curriculum.

In reading, their assessment takeaways were that in the fall, students started at the 53rd percentile and stayed there through the winter, which means that they learned what they needed to learn, but weren’t accelerating learning, but remained on track for one year’s growth.

They’re seeing many reading difficulties for students in grades 4-14 due to gaps in foundational skills, with the greatest growth in K-2, sixth and eighth grades.

In math, they started at the 50th percentile in the fall and moved to the 55th percentile through the winter, which is a “big jump,” showing that students were accelerating their growth.

Every grade level exceeded the growth goals in math, Cutler and Frisbee said, which was the result of the math task force and targeted professional learning for teachers.

They showed growth in reading in grades K-2 and math achievement has been increasing since the pandemic, they said.

The curriculum coordinators said summer loss is something they watch, but it’s also a question of at how deep a level are students learning during the school year, Cutler said.

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Skornogiski, school board member, said the summer learning loss information would be good to share with community partners that may be able to help address that through their various summer programming and resources.

Julie Murray teaches secondary life skills at Paris Gibson Education Center.

She said the program was developed in the 1970s for 18-21 year old special education students. The district saw its benefit and adopted it, she said.

It’s a program that focuses on how to be safe in a community, increased independence and vocational skills.

Students in the program must attend GFPS for four years and get a diploma or certificate of completion, and complete job training.

Areas they learn include cooking, cleaning, budgeting/money, transportation, navigating the community safety, fitness, communication, social skills, self regulation, studying for the driver’s test, connecting with personal resources and more.

Murray said their successes are more anecdotal but she had a student come to her in 2022 who had lived with her dad, but he’d lost the apartment, so she was largely homeless. Through the program, staff helped her get approved for Section 8 housing, SNAP benefits and qualified for Social Security and by working with North Central Independent Living Services, she’s able to live on her own. 

Because her family often asks her for money and manipulates her, they’ve helped her set up a trust through Rural Dynamics for her earnings working in an elementary school cafeteria. 

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Murray said that her first year, the girl cried almost every day that life was so hard, but hasn’t seen her cry in awhile and she was probably their biggest success story.

The program’s capacity and need varies, but for the current one teacher and one paraeducator staff, they have 8 to 18 participants. 

Murray said that varies based on the needs of those participating. This year, they have nine in the program, but they require more work.

Murray also works with vocational teachers at the high schools and they try to do case management and collaborative outings in the community.

“At the end of the day, this is a huge student achievement,” Boyd said.

Murray said the goal is that participants walk out with a job they can keep.

“By doing this, we’re actually doing a great service to the system,” Bronson said.

Thompson said it’s making a real difference in those students being able to reach their potential so they’re able to contribute and have a place in the community.

She said that they had a student from the program when she’s was working at NorthWestern Energy and they were always popular with employees.

Thompson said that without the program, the community would likely be paying for those students entirely.

Boyd said that through the program, the student participants had logged 12,400 hours of community work time from September to the end of February.

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Boyd said from the GFPS lense, the program is meeting the needs of its students and that they’d been asked to do more, but can’t offer it regionally with existing resources.

The law allows the district to educate students from 3-21, but state funding doesn’t cover programs for those 19-21 and so the program is funded through a federal program.

He said they also have students in schools after their 18th birthday.

“It’s a gem,” Boyd said of the program.

Jodi Hicks of the Career and College Readiness Center said that as of mid-March, they had 137 students in the program between the ages of 16-18; 111 between ages of 19-24; 131 between 25-44; 40 between 45-59 and 10 ages 60 and older for a total of 429 people.

She said that participants have to take a skills assessment and log 12 hours of attendance before they’re counted as enrolled and had 367 enrolled students.

The center looks for measurable skill gains.

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For adult participants, they to have 40 hours of instruction and English language learners need 60 hours of instruction, and then they take a test to see if they’ve made gains.

High school equivalency candidates can pass one of five subject tests to count as a gain.

If they’re working with the center or transition to post secondary education or a training program, that also counts as a gain.

Hicks said that in February, they had 206 students who needed their high school equivalency and 200 students who already had their diploma but were working on other things to gain skills for college, certification or other programs.

For the 2024-2025 school year as of mid-March, Hicks said that 29 people had taken their post test. She said that seemed like a small number, but many earn their instruction hours later in the year and it takes time to hit those milestones.

Seventy-five students had passed at least one high school equivalency tests and 72 had finished all of their equivalency tests and earned their HiSet.

Hicks said their participation numbers often ramp up in the spring with graduation coming.

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Boyd told school board members during their March 17 meeting that there had been lots of conversation about the “hemorrhaging of students” at the secondary level.

He said the district was losing about 100 students per semester at that level, for a total of 460 students over the last two years.

Digging into the profile of those students, it’s those who don’t attend, with 100 or more absences annually on average, he said.

They might show up for the first 10 days of school and then teachers won’t see them again until the end of the semester in hopes of getting credit, which doesn’t often happen.

“These conversations aren’t new,” Boyd said, and staff has been working to address it since, “we’re seeing more and more students just walk away.”

He said those students sometimes come back saying they think they could do school, but they don’t want to leave the house, or have to work to support their families, or can only do three hours of schoolwork a day.

It takes a minimum of 20 credits to graduate and 23 credits is the normal track.

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The C.M. Russell High principal started working on a learning platform, called Swish, where GFPS can choose from 160 courses to provide instruction and it can track measured progress.

At CMR, about 16 students are using it and they log in daily based on their schedule.

Boyd said they’d seen progress among those students, and have piloted it for a group of students who weren’t engaged for a variety of reasons, to include community based issues, trouble with law enforcement, severe anxiety or depression and more.

Boyd said the district has seen the requests for medically homebound instruction increase by 1,000 percent in recent years. In those cases, medical or mental health providers can say a student isn’t ready or able to attend school and the district is then responsible for providing an instructor for an hour a day and five hours weekly.

During COVID, the district invested in a program called Ingenuity and Paris Gibson was using it for some students. Great Falls High hadn’t launched it yet.

“If we don’t adapt to the times, in innovative ways, we’ll continue to lose kids at the secondary level,” Boyd said.

Mainwaring said that the students in question have often missed so much school and are so far behind it’s hard for them to get credit.

Boyd said that it’s hard to have conversations with those students and their families about their low likelihood of graduation, so they’re working with the high schools to create a core based schedule to launch the online learning program district wide.

Boyd said that some students come to take certain classes, but won’t show up for their core competency classes, which are required for graduations.

He said they’ve identified classes for English, math and social studies that the district can staff with teachers who would have a normal four period teaching day and then for their fifth period would handle remote instruction through the online platform to monitor progress and engage with the students.

Programs like this aren’t cheap and from his seat, “it’s really scary,” so Boyd said they’re looking to build interest from the community and the region.

Boyd said that one small district launched the same program last year and grew their high school population by about 300 students and was about a year away from becoming a AA district.

Boyd said that small districts all around GFPS were trying to do the same thing so “we can either choose to be at the forefront, or be behind and have our kids go to other communities.”

Students don’t have to physically be in a seat in school to be counted for ANB, which is the state’s base funding number, so without the program, Boyd said that money could leave the district if students went elsewhere for something similar.

Boyd said district staff was working on it, with high school principals supporting and teachers interested. He said they’re working through logistics to meet the accreditation requirements, working with the program vendors and watching the CMR students complete their year.

“Don’t be surprised if the ask is coming,” Boyd said, for the district to launch the program.

He said they’re looking at including seventh grade in the program “because the pattern doesn’t start in the ninth grade.”

Working with district mental health therapists, Boyd said that if they don’t address the instructional model, GFPS is looking at the continued loss of students.

Boyd said that to participate, students would have to sign a contract, which includes an attendance requirement, and if they don’t meet the requirements, they’d had a meeting with the school and if it continued, to come back to regular schools.

The program isn’t just for the non-engaged students, he said, but could also be for those who are highly engaged and want to take classes GFPS doesn’t or can’t offer.

The licenses are about $900 per student, but they’re concurrent, so could be shared across students since they won’t be accessing the program at the same time. Boyd said they were looking at purchasing 75 licenses until they have a better feel for usage.

For three years of 75 licenses, the total was $206,000, but staff was working with the vendor in an effort to get the cost under $200,000, a cost that could be recouped with about 36 students by getting that ANB state funding.

If the district can recoup 36 students annually for ANB, it would cover those costs.

He said they’ve already identified 50 students who have asked for the program at the high school level, but at some point there would be accreditation issues with counselors and librarians and other staff requirements, so they’re watching those factors.

Boyd said Hamilton Public Schools started a similar program by purchasing 100 licenses and by last October, had outgrown their teachers and were up to 300 students, so they were looking at how to expand and pulling students from the entire valley.

Hoyer said that the program includes a spectrum of courses that are accredited, so if homeschool students wanted to come back during their junior or senior year, it could be an option.

Boyd said they’d been craving an online credit recovery program to get kids back into schools and the program they’re considering also has that option.

“It will be an undertaking not only for the buildings but the staff as well, because it’s a different way of thinking,” he said.