Schools struggle with goals
Idaho schools continue to struggle to meet statewide goals in reading and math – goals that will get more demanding each year until 2013, when 100 percent of students nationwide are expected to perform at grade level.
Those expectations are part of the federal No Child Left Behind law and apply to all students, including special education students and students who don’t speak English.
According to reports released Monday by the Idaho Department of Education, only 38 percent of Idaho’s school districts are achieving “Adequate Yearly Progress” toward the 2013 goal.
Among the districts failing to meet the progress goal was the Post Falls School District. Not enough of the district’s special education students passed the reading portion of the Idaho Standards Achievement Test, causing the entire district to be labeled “Needs Improvement.”
The label carries sanctions, which increase for each year a district or school misses the state’s goals.
Barney Brewton, the director of elementary programs for the district, said Post Falls will continue implementing a districtwide improvement plan – a plan the district had to create last year as a sanction for falling short of goals for 2004.
Mullan Trail Elementary, Post Falls Middle School and River City Middle School also failed to meet the progress standard but are only on “alert” status. If any of the schools miss goals next year, the schools will have to offer students the chance to transfer to a better-performing school within the district.
To be in the clear, schools and districts have to meet 41 targets established by the federal government. The targets include the subjects of reading and math, along with a third indicator. That third indicator is a language usage test at the elementary and middle school levels; at high schools, the third measure is a school’s graduation rate.
Other targets are based on the characteristics of students and include race, socioeconomic status, students with disabilities and “limited English proficient” students. One missed target in a single subject – with groups as small as 34 students measured – is an automatic fail for an entire school or district.
The Lakeland School District made the progress standard, but Lakeland Junior High and Mountain View Alternative School did not. Special education students missed goals for math at the junior high level, and the alternative school students didn’t perform well enough in math or reading.
Assistant Superintendent Ron Schmidt said Monday that the entire district exceeded statewide averages in every area tested on the Idaho Standards Achievement Test – an average based on the performances of all students, including those in special education.
Schmidt said he believes the federal government needs to reexamine the law as it applies to students with special needs and provide districts with more flexibility.
“I just really question whether some of the No Child Left Behind statutes are realistic when it comes to subpopulations,” Schmidt said. “The feds need to really take a look at it.”
The Coeur d’Alene School District met goals for 2005, but a handful of the district’s schools failed, including Skyway and Sorensen elementary schools, all three middle schools and Lake City High School.
Of the three middle schools, Canfield was listed as “Needs Improvement,” meaning students can opt to transfer to one of the district’s other middle schools. Woodland and Lakes were placed on alert status and have another year to improve or the schools will also face sanctions.
The two elementaries and Lake City High were also placed on alert. Most of the missed goals in the Coeur d’Alene district were related to students in special education or those with low socioeconomic status.
Officials from the Coeur d’Alene School District were unavailable for comment on Monday.
The 38 percent compliance rate of Idaho school districts achieving meeting the goal for the 2004-2005 school year declined from 58 percent in the 2003-2004 school year. On a school-by-school basis, 261 of the 601 Idaho public schools measured for 2005 did not make the grade under the No Child Left Behind Act. That’s a jump of 123 more than last year when 630 schools were tested. The percentage of Idaho schools meeting all of the benchmarks dropped to 57 percent from 87 percent the previous year.
State educators said several statistical factors contributed to the decline: an increase in expected proficiency standards for reading and math, factoring in graduation rates for the first time and adding test scores for fifth and sixth grades which weren’t included in last year’s calculations.
“You can’t really say that Idaho schools have gotten worse because we’re just now getting the full picture of the situation that we didn’t have in previous years,” said Idaho Department of Education spokeswoman Allison Westfall.
Other states have joined a growing revolt over the law’s requirements and punishments. Connecticut’s attorney general is threatening to sue the federal government over the law, Utah has essentially opted out of the federal funding that is attached to the compliance standards and Kansas lawmakers have said they don’t have enough money in their entire state budget to meet 100 percent compliance with the federal law.