Parents told schools failed test

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

The Mountain Home School District will be notifying parents of students in the junior high and high school this week that the schools have failed a key standard of the No Child Left Behind Act.

By failing to "make adequate progress," as defined by the law, the district is informing parents that they have the option to move their students to another higher-performing school in the district.

Of course, there aren't any.

But the notification to that effect is required by the law.

The No Child Left Behind Act, which has been sharply criticized by educators, both locally and nationally for "unrealistic" standards, calls on schools to be judged on 41 different factors. If inadequate progress is made toward reaching goals established by the act in any one of those 41 criteria for two years in a row, the entire school is judged to have failed.

The programs where the district failed to meet the goals were essentially in the special education and migrant education programs.

The district failed to meet targeted goals for performance at the high school in reading and math among students with disabilities and students in reading for students identified as being economically disadvantaged.

As part of the act, the state set a target of 66 percent of all students being able to read at grade level, and 51 percent of students being able to perform at grade level in math.

At the high school, the most recent scores showed the students in the special education programs achieved only a 29 percent proficiency in reading at grade level, and a 24 percent proficiency in being able to do grade-level math problems. For the economically disadvantaged, 55 percent of the students were reading at grade level. Those students met the goals in math proficiency.

At the junior high, 31 percent of the disabled students were reading at grade level, and just under 25 percent met the math goals.

The junior high also failed to meet goals for its students classified as Hispanic, with just over 55 percent reading at grade level and 45 percent meeting the math goals. Those students classified as having Limited English Proficiency fell short on the reading standard with only 62 percent reading at grade level, but that category of students met the math goals.

Tim McMurtrey, director of curriculum for the district, noted that many times students fall into several categories. For example, he noted, Hispanic students, especially those of migrant-worker parents, often are also in the economically disadvantaged category and in the Limited English Proficiency Category.

By failing to bring those categories up to the goals set by the law for two years running, the schools were deemed to have made the "failure" list.

"The No Child Left Behind Act is good in theory," McMurtrey said. "I don't mind at all being held accountable for performance. But I'd rather see success or failure based on growth of an individual student in the course of a year, rather than any arbitrary number.

"You can't expect these kids to do as well as other students when they have the kind of issues they have," such as limited experience with English when they enter the district, or severe developmental disabilities.

McMurtrey noted that "we're not alone. Most districts in this area didn't make it (in those categories) either. It's a statewide issue."

McMurtrey said the district would be focusing resources on its special education and migrant education programs at those schools to help improve the scores, "but there are limits to how far you can bring a given child in a given year."

The district did meet targeted goals in all the other 41 criteria imposed by the law.

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