Hoover test scores show ‘astounding’ growth

Students in Hoover City Schools showed “astounding” improvements in their academic test scores this past spring, the system’s chief academic officer said.

The percentage of Hoover students at or above grade level increased by 11 percentage points in math, 5 percentage points in science and 4 percentage points in English, Chief Academic Officer Chris Robbins said.

That was more than twice the level of growth compared to the state average growth rate in each subject area between the spring of 2021 and spring of 2022, he said. Statewide, the gains were 5 percentage points in math, 2 percentage points in science and 2 percentage points in English.

More specifically, the percentage of Hoover students deemed proficient in math grew from 45% in the spring of 2021 to 56% in the spring of 2022, while the proficiency rate in science grew from 55% to 60% and the proficiency rate in English grew from 66% to 70% of students, Robbins said.

Also, a national study by Stanford and Harvard universities showed that while the average student nationally lost more than half a year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading from 2019 to 2022, Hoover students showed gains of three to four months in both reading and math, Robbins said.

Alabama students as a whole ranked among the top 10 states that either improved or lost the least amount of learning in math and reading, and Hoover’s results were better than the state average as well. Statewide, Alabama students lost about 1½ months of learning in math and had a negligible loss in reading, Robbins shared.

Students in the Hoover school system also landed on four national Top 10 lists for districts with substantial learning gains for students in poverty, black students and Hispanic students.

While those groups of students nationally had greater learning losses than white students, that wasn’t the case in Hoover, Robbins said. In Hoover, students in poverty, black students and Hispanic students showed the same or greater than their average classmates’ progress over the past three years, data shows.

In particular, Hispanic students in Hoover showed a full year’s worth of growth in reading, compared to three or four months’ worth of growth for the general student population. Students in poverty in Hoover also showed more growth than the average student in Hoover, with four to five months’ worth of gains in both reading and math, Robbins said.

“That’s really extraordinary,” Robbins said. “Hoover City Schools students are making uncommon gains as compared to area districts, to our state and across our nation. We have a lot to celebrate.”

Only about 15% of students in the nation attend school in a district that showed gains in reading from 2019 to 2022, and only 2.5% of students in the nation attend school in a district that showed gains in math during that period, Robbins said.

The gains in Hoover are the result of the collaborative efforts of everyone in the district — from the support staff and district leadership to the principals, teachers, students and families, he said.

School board member Craig Kelley said he believed the fact that Hoover schools were prepared for remote learning with technology played a big role in Hoover students’ progress and kept learning losses from being worse than they were during the height of the pandemic.

Despite the recent positive news, there still are areas for growth, Robbins said.

While Hoover is in the top 10 school districts statewide in terms of proficiency in math, science and English, Hoover continues to rank behind many of the over-the-mountain school districts with which people often make comparisons, including Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills and Homewood, state data shows.

For example, the percentage of Hoover students deemed proficient in math was 56%, compared to proficiency rates of 77% in Mountain Brook, 72% in Vestavia Hills and 59% in Homewood.

In science, 60% of Hoover students were deemed proficient, compared to 81% in Mountain Brook, 79% in Vestavia Hills and 68% in Homewood. In English, 70% of Hoover students were deemed proficient, compared to 84% in Mountain Brook, 83% in Vestavia Hills and 75% in Homewood.

“We’re not going to stop here,” Robbins said. “We’re going to work hard this year and in subsequent years to continue to show growth in these areas.”

The national comparisons were based on research done by Stanford and Harvard universities, using the National Assessment for Educational Progress and state assessments such as the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program. The study covered 3,700 school districts across 29 states and Washington, D.C., Robbins said.