1

School OverviewPS 75 is an elementary school located in Bronx, NY, in the New York City (NYC) District # 8. The school serves a total of 632 students in grades PK-5 with a total faculty of 60 educators. The school is comprised of a largely minority student body with 25% Black students and 73% students of Hispanic dissent. Eighty percent of students in the school are eligible for Free/Reduced Lunch.1 Nineteen percent of students in the school are identified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) with 15% of students having a learning disability 2

New York State Assessments The New York State Assessment Program (NYSTP) was developed to assess students’ progress toward New York State Learning Standards.3 As part of the state’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards, since 2010, New York has been improving their assessment program to reflect increased rigor and college and career readiness expectations of students at all grade

levels, including elementary school.4

For English Language Arts (ELA,) the NYSTP administers yearly assessments at grades 3-8. These tests are designed to measure grade-level expectations of students’ ability to express themselves and are guided by four comprehensive standards: (1) Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding; (2) Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and expression; (3) Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation; and (4)

1 Data based on 2011 School Year and obtained from National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/).2 https://reportcards.nysed.gov/counties.php?year=20113 http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/ela/elarg.html4?http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/pressRelease/20120717/home.html

Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction.

To gauge student progress toward these standards, the ELA assessment contain approx. 50-60 multiple choice items, as well as various short response items and long response items in which students construct their own responses to prompts and open-end questions by producing original work.

In New York, students’ test scores can be categorized into one of four levels of mastery: Below Standard (Level 1), Meets Basic Standard

(Level 2), Meets Proficiency Standard (Level 3), and Exceeds Proficiency Standard (Level 4).

Student Success with JourneysTo assess if implementing HMH Journeys had an impact on learning, student test scores from the Spring of 2011 (prior to using the program) and the Spring of 2012 (after the first year of usage) were obtained for students at PS 75 at grades 3, 4, and 5. These findings are presented in Figure 1

Figure 1Percent of Students at Levels 3/4

1

The comparison of achievement scores revealed that at all grade levels examined, the percentage of student that Met or Exceeded the state ELA standards were greater in 2012, after using Journeys, than the previous year with an average gain of over 3%.

ConclusionThis one-year examination of an implementation of HMH Journeys revealed that the program was associated with increased English Language Arts performance. This case study provides evidence that Journeys is an effective reading program.