8 county schools placed on watch list

Eight Spokane County schools have been placed on a watch list of schools identified as “needing improvement,” or those with students who are not meeting federal education standards adopted under the No Child Left Behind law.

A preliminary report from the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction released Thursday shows that schools in the Spokane, West Valley, Central Valley, Mead and Nine Mile Falls school districts did not make “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP, for at least two consecutive years.

In Washington, student scores from the Washington Assessment of Student Learning are used to determine AYP, which measures student progress in specific groups, such as students in special education or low-income students.

There were 248 schools and 28 districts identified as “needing improvement” this year statewide.

The scores are preliminary, and districts will have an opportunity to appeal them.

A school is put into “improvement status” if a subgroup of students does not make AYP for two consecutive years in any subject area, such as reading or math.

The label is especially troubling to Title I schools, or schools with high populations of low-income students who receive federal funds.

Repeated failure of a Title I school to meet AYP could mean the loss of federal education dollars, or offering parents the choice to transfer to a better-performing school or district.

None of the Spokane County schools on the list is Title I.

“For schools that aren’t Title I, this really gives them a better understanding of where things are going and what areas need improvement,” said Eric Earling, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education. “It’s a little more in-depth analysis that tells parents which schools are struggling to educate students in certain groups, like Hispanic or those with special education background.”

The federal law requires that all students meet the standards in reading, math and writing by 2014, including special education students.

That area is where schools continually struggle.

Every year since 2003, Central Valley’s University High School has been on the watch list of schools needing improvement.

The school’s only category that didn’t meet AYP in 2006 was special education math. In 2005 the school didn’t meet AYP in special education reading.

“There’s a catch in No Child Left Behind in that it says that it’s nondiscriminatory and it includes everybody, but for the kids that have disabilities that’s not a good thing,” said Bill Ash, Central Valley’s assessment coordinator. “We don’t base how well our schools are doing on our disabled learners. That is not the only factor.”

Central Valley’s appeal is in the mail, and Spokane and West Valley also plan to appeal some of the findings.

A school can exit “improvement” status after successfully making AYP for two years in a row. Schools on the improvement list after two failed years move up through a step system that includes sanctions at each level, including loss of federal money and giving parents the option of changing schools.

This year Spokane’s Sacajawea Middle School and Mead’s Northwood Middle School left improvement status.

“It’s all about sanctions and not about offering schools extra resources for areas where they’re having difficulties,” said Ash. “Instead, it’s ‘we’re going to take stuff away from them and put them on a naughty list.’ ”