Struggling to make the grade
Most of her classmates have gone home to play or watch television, but Julia Black has stayed behind. She’s working on a math assignment in a quiet classroom at Lakeside Elementary, a small school set amid farmland on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation.
The 10-year-old Native American and about 40 other fourth- and fifth-graders stay after school four days a week, finishing homework and honing their math and reading skills to boost their scores on the Idaho Standards Achievement Test.
The new after-school program, called the Success Center, is funded through the same education law that threatens to come down like a hammer on the rural Plummer-Worley Joint School District. Faced with the threat of sanctions – from loss of funding to loss of local control – the Plummer-Worley district is struggling to balance increasing expectations with the needs of its population.
It’s a battle being played out on both sides of the state line and across the country. Under the No Child Left Behind law, every school is expected to have 100 percent of students pass tests in math and reading by 2012. In the meantime, schools are expected to reach goals that get increasingly difficult each year.
For schools with a high number of minorities or poor students, hitting the mark is even harder. Schools have to meet goals in 41 target areas, broken down by ethnicity, economic status and disabilities.
It’s all or none. One missed mark means a school fails.
About 63 percent of Plummer-Worley students are Native American. The district’s Native American students fell short of the state’s goals in reading and math. Statewide, Native American students performed higher, but still missed the goal for reading.
In Washington state, American Indian students in the fourth, seventh, and 10th grades met standards in reading and writing. Statewide, about 6,000 Indian students passed the Washington Assessment for Student Learning test.
Very few schools in North Idaho have as high a percentage of Native American students as Plummer-Worley. Most don’t have enough of a Native American population to meet the reporting guidelines.
Plummer-Worley also has 80 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch, a statistic often used to measure student poverty. Students in that group – as well as every other target area measured – performed below state averages.
The district is also rural, with three distinct communities tucked into the farmland, miles apart along U.S. Highway 95.
There’s a need for new facilities. At the elementary school, for example, the old steam radiators are often out of whack. One classroom swings from extreme cold to sweltering heat. Sometimes, students study with coats and hats on to stay warm.
Many of these “extraneous factors,” as Superintendent Wayne Trottier calls them, play into how well students do on the ISAT.
“I’ve got 10 fingers and I could put a finger on each factor and still need about 20 more hands,” Trottier said. “It’s not a discredit to the community. It’s not a discredit to parents. It’s certainly not a discredit to students. That’s just the way it is.”
Testing expert Dr. Charles Clock of Post Falls said what happens outside of the school environment carries into the classroom – and it shows in the ISAT test results.
“It has a lot to do with where you come from,” Clock said. “Any time you give these kinds of tests to kids in low-income areas, areas where kids don’t have external resources, they don’t do very well.”
Clock works with testing at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy, which has the highest ISAT scores in the state.
“Those kids come from very enriched environments,” he said.
Two of the three schools in the Plummer-Worley District have been labeled Needs Improvement based on ISAT scores. Lakeside Elementary was originally on the list, but later removed due to a change in the state’s calculations.
With the label come sanctions.
Schools in Needs Improvement have to offer students the option to transfer to a better-performing school.
In small districts like Plummer-Worley, there are no alternatives. But the schools have to develop plans for improvement and offer tutoring and other help for students.
Trottier worries about what might be lost in the push to drive up test scores.
“Where do we get the opportunity to reflect or include any local flavor in our school?” he asked. “When I talk about local flavor, I’m talking about the culture. We’re not just a Native community, we’re a farming community as well, a working-class community.
“How do we incorporate that into the rigid coursework and standards we’re placing on kids? Is this eventually the elimination of vocational ed programs, band, music, sports?”The Success Center aims to provide some cultural lessons in addition to helping students with reading and math. After an hour of homework and studying, there’s an hour of enrichment classes, with topics like photography and cooking, but also Native American drumming and powwows. Busing is provided to bring kids home at night.
The program also aims to get parents more involved. They’re big players in a student’s success, Trottier said. Once a month, the Success Center has a family night. This month’s featured math games for the family.
The high school and junior high have programs in place to improve attendance and have implemented mandatory study halls for students who fall below a C in any subject. The dropout rate has improved.
Lakeside High Principal Jim Phillips said he’s concerned the dropout rate could become an issue again, though, with students required to pass the ISAT to graduate. Not every student can and will, he said.
“That 100 percent is a Utopian perception of perfection,” Phillips said. “That is what Utopia is, a fantasy in a way. But we’re human beings, not robots that can be plugged in and be proficient.”
Though the district has a few years before students are expected to hit the 100 percent mark, for each year until then missed goals will mean increased sanctions. Teachers could be replaced, the school board could be forced to relinquish control and the state could take over.
Teacher Sheila Peters doesn’t think it will go that far.
If Plummer-Worley gets to that point, Peters said the district probably won’t be alone. After all, Peters said, other schools have unique populations and unique challenges.
“Some of No Child Left Behind might be unreasonable,” Peters said, “but if it is, I believe it will prove out across the nation.”
Like many educators, Peters supports the accountability that No Child Left Behind has brought to education. And the new state test gives teachers immediate feedback.
While it used to take weeks to get test scores back, ISAT scoring is instantaneous. Teachers immediately know what skills students are lacking.
Still, there’s stress associated with the testing.
Students are being measured. Teachers are being measured. The performance of entire school districts is being tied to this one test.
It’s serious business and even students know that, Lakeside Elementary Principal Joe St. John said.
“I had a second-grader who took the ISAT reading test,” St. John said. “The class left the computer lab and he was on the floor facedown, crying.”
Students see their scores instantly and know whether they pass or fail.
This student scored 162, St. John said.
“He knows that 182 is the target for the end of second grade,” St. John said. “Already, he knows where he ranks with the rest of his class.”
Students say they get the jitters when it’s time to take the ISAT.
“I worry about my score,” Julia said. She said she knows if she doesn’t pass, she’ll have to take the test again.
“It’s kind of a difficult test,” 10-year-old Quintin Peixoto said. “I feel nervous, because I try to get a good grade, but I don’t know what’s going to come at me.”
Students at Lakeside High have added pressure. To graduate, students must pass the ISAT.
“There’s a big sense of relief to pass,” Phillips said. “We had a number of students who were off by a point or two. We kept encouraging them, ‘One more question and you’ll get it next time.’ “