Menu
High school makes AYP goals
Mountain Home High School is no longer in "AYP jail."
The school district was notified over the summer that it met its Adequate Yearly Progress goals for the second year in a row, after several years of failing the AYP standards.
Adequate Yearly Progress is based on test results mandated by the state and the federal No Child Left Behind law. Each year, over the last ten years, the number of students who must pass the tests at a school have increased.
Currently, for a school to get a passing grade, at least 85 percent of the students must show grade-level proficiency or better in math and reading.
Those goals are expected to eventually increase to 100 percent, although state Superintentent of Public Education Tom Luna recently delayed the 2015 target date for achieving that level of proficiency in recognition of the funding cuts in the state education budget that he helped develop.
There are 41 different demographic groups that are looked at in determining AYP pass or fail grades for a school. If a school has at least 35 students in that demographic group, the AYP standards apply. Small school districts may only have a half dozen demographic groups that qualify, but school districts the size of Mountain Home or larger typically qualify for all 41 groups to be evaluated. If any one group fails to meet the AYP standards, the entire school gets a failing grade.
Historically, Mountain Home's schools have had difficulty getting students who don't speak English to pass English reading and writing tests at grade level, and students in the special education programs to pass grade-level math tests.
This year, North Elementary and the high school passed the AYP goals.
The junior High, Hacker Middle School and West Elementary failed in one demographic group or another, while all the other schools passed AYP for the 2010 school year. (The print edition incorrectly indicated that only North Elementary and the high school had passed).
In some years, a school will pass and in another year it will fail. North, for example, passed in the 2008 school year, failed in 2009 and passed again last year.
Hacker Middle School and the junior high have failed for seven straight years.
"However, they've made great gains," McMurtrey said. "In 2009, for example, Hacker failed in eight of the 41 categories. Last year (2010), they only missed three -- special ed reading and math and Hispanic reading."
The two schools that failed in the most number of demographic groups last year were West Elementary, with failing grades in six demographic groups, and the junior high, which missed in seven groups. Most importantly, both of those schools failed in the category of "all students math" and West also failed in the "all students reading" category.
One other area of concern for McMurtrey is the demographic of "white economically disadvantaged students," which is growing in the district and where several schools failed in that demographic.
"It's a proven fact that students who are economically disadvantaged (poor) tend to struggle. These kids need extra help," he said.
But finding that help has been difficult, as state funding constraints have forced the school district to cut back on remedial programs designed to get students caught up to grade level. "To a certain extent, they're on their own right now. I don't like that, but it's going to be up to those kids to get caught up now."
Some schools also face special problems in meeting AYP criteria.
Some of the elementary schools, for example, don't hit the 35-student minimum level to be counted in the AYP evaluation. "But then those students (who failed at the elementary level tests), all feed into Hacker, and suddenly Hacker does have enough kids (in a given demographic) to count." McMurtrey said. "That makes it tough for Hacker to pass, and a real challenge for the teachers there."
Another problem is how the demographic criteria are designed. A single white, economically disadvantaged special ed student would qualify in all three of those categories.
"If that one student fails the test, he pulls down the score for all three categories," McMurtrey said. "Sometimes, when you just barely have enough students to qualify (in a demographic), one student's success or failure (on the state tests) can mean the difference between the entire school passing or failing."
And if any one school fails, the entire district is given a failing grade. Virtually every district in the state the size of Mountain Home or larger, are consistently given failing grades because somewhere in those districts, at least one of the 41 demographic groups has failed.
The consequences can be severe. Theoretically, the state can come in and take over the entire school district. It's never done so, but the law allows it.
That's why McMurtrey isn't a fan of the AYP program. He is, however, a fan of the testing that goes along with it.
"We look very closely at the test scores, for schools, for teachers and even for individual students. They tell us where we need to improve and focus our resources," he said.
In fact, he'd like to see a few more tests. When the state required a test at both the start and the end of the school year, it gave the district a clear idea of how well schools and -- in particular -- individual teachers were doing in improving the learning of individual students. The district had good tracking statistics.
Recently, the state eliminated one of the annual tests, due to budget constraints. With only one test at the end of the school year, the district has much less information to go on.
"It makes it harder (to do an evaluation), but we'll use all the data we can get. When things are as tight (financially) as they are now, we have to be very precise in where we focus our efforts."