Epic Sees Significant Growth In Reading, Math Scores

Photograph by Jacob Starkey

Test Scores for Epic Charter Schools have been on the rise, and district officials have big goals for these core academic areas. 

At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, 4.4% of students demonstrated mastery of language arts standards. By the spring, that number had risen to 17.5%. By the end of the school year, Epic hopes 35% of students will have mastered the content. 

In 2023-24, students' ELA scores grew from 3.1% in September to 20.29% in May, and math scores also saw a noticeable jump from 4.6% in September to 18.4% in December.

¨Bottom line is, in the area of reading you are making some good progress this year compared to the previous three,¨ Epic consultant Robert Sommers told the Epic school board at the February board meeting. In a subsequent interview with ENN, Sommers said that while a downward trend in scores in recent years is often blamed on the pandemic, test scores have been on the decline nationally for years. 

Sommers said the traditional approach to education is one-size-fits-all. Epic’s approach offers more personalization, partly out of technology and partly out of underlying philosophy. 

¨Everyone wants it to look the same,¨ he said, but noted that students’ differing levels of mastery mean the one-size-fits-all approach leaves some students behind.

He attributed some of Epic's success in raising test scores to the district’s nontraditional way of schooling and some of the advantages online learning offers.

For example, Sommers explained, students who don't master a topic one day can revisit it, taking a different approach another day. This is both a function of technology and the way teachers approach their jobs. 

Epic Superintendent Bart Banfield noted Epic teachers’ ability to drill down to areas that are causing students difficulties and focus on them until the students grasp the concepts. For example, Epic might get a student who transfers in without having learned how to do long division. This could severely limit how much math they could do without this foundational concept. Epic teachers could use tutoring, Math+ and several other programs that Epic offers to help the student overcome this setback.

"If you go back and you look at our mission statement, we talk about individualizing the education to the unique child," Banfield said. 

Tutoring offers the students personalized attention that can help them overcome challenges in reading and math.

Add to that teachers being able to use data to change their instruction, and you have Epic's increase in reading and math scores, which Banfield said is one of Epic's biggest strengths. The district is furthering this approach by hiring Oklahoma- certified teachers to help students in areas of need and identify learning gaps.

One way Epic tracks progress is by regular internal benchmarks. Epic has tried other approaches in the past, including special software and tutors from outside the district.

“And that's where Epic … has done a better job of staying focused on the student achievement versus ‘I teach so many classes. I gotta process so many homework assignments. I gotta grade papers and move on.’ No, it's ‘I got to connect with the student and make sure they learn their material,’” Sommers said.