Mixed school report

If a kid were taking home a report card like the one Idaho received in a national survey released Wednesday, Mom and Dad might not be too happy.

The state got high marks in Education Week’s “Quality Counts 2005” report for having “clear and specific” standards and curriculum, but got a C-plus for school climate and Ds for its efforts to improve teacher quality and for the way it doles out funding to the school districts.

But Idaho educators and school officials cautioned against taking the results of the survey to heart.

It was one of several national surveys released this week alone, said Allison Westfall, spokeswoman for the State Department of Education. And, because the state filled out information for the survey in the fall, some of the information reported is no longer accurate.

“This particular one comes up every year,” Westfall said. “They always contact us for the data. It’s interesting to see what grades we get.”

The report, online at www.edweek.org, gave Idaho high marks for having a standardized curriculum for all the state’s schools.

Edweek.org said it’s a “strong foundation” with “clear and specific standards for what students should know and be able to do.” But Idaho was dinged for not having a state test aligned to its science standards.

Although the state hadn’t administered a statewide, standardized science test at the time information was gathered for Education Week’s report, Westfall said the test was in the works. This spring, a science portion is being added to the Idaho Standards Achievement Test.

The report said Idaho doesn’t provide recognition to high-performing schools or schools that improve their scores on the ISATs, but within the past couple of months, the State Department of Education had announced a list of schools recognized for doing just that.

Westfall said those examples illustrate some of the frustrations with these national reports, where information often is gathered months in advance.

“It doesn’t reflect work that’s under way,” she said.

Washington state was given a B for standards and accountability, but Cs in every other category, including a C+ for school climate and a C- for efforts to improve teacher quality.

The study went on to say that Washington falls below average on every spending indicator. Statewide, about 24 percent of students attend school in districts that spend at or above the national average. The state spends 3.4 percent of its total taxable resources on education while the national average is 3.8 percent.

Idaho’s D for efforts to improve teacher quality was partly the result of an unfunded mandate that requires districts to provide mentoring programs for new teachers. The legislature requires districts to help new teachers, but eliminated funding to the districts for that purpose.

“Those dollars have dried up,” said Ron Schmidt, assistant superintendent of the Lakeland School District. “There’s an expectation that the district still have that program. We’re doing it, but everything we’re doing is without dollars from the state earmarked for that program.”

Idaho was ranked near the bottom of the 50 states for the amount it spends per student. It wasn’t a surprise to Westfall or the local educators who spoke about the survey on Wednesday.

“We know that our resources in the state of Idaho are very slim,” said Judy Drake, director of staff and community relations for the Coeur d’Alene School District. “We know that resources would help us make a difference in some of these areas, but we are going to continue to do the very best job with the dollars we have.”

Local school districts say they are struggling to provide teacher training and mentoring with the resources they have.

The Coeur d’Alene District has budgeted for a program called Teachers On Special Assignment, where some classroom teachers are re-assigned to act as instructional coaches. They help teachers work together and act as one-on-one mentors to new teachers.

Schmidt said Lakeland hires substitute teachers to free up classroom teachers for training and to work together.

“In local schools, you see us holding on to those programs because they’re so valuable to teachers,” said Post Falls Assistant Superintendent Becky Ford. “It would be wonderful to have monies allotted for these programs.”