5 local schools receive poor marks in 2003 Academic Achievement Report
Five local school districts have to offer some of their students a choice in where they go to school this coming year. The state Department of Education named those schools Tuesday in the 2003 Academic Achievement Report, which pertains to all schools and is based on requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
The list takes into account students’ performance overall and categorized in subgroups on the reading and mathematics tests of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), as well as kindergarten through eighth grade attendance and high school graduation rates. The report indicates whether districts’ students made “adequate yearly progress (AYP)” toward the NCLB goal that all students be proficient in reading and math by the end of the next 11 years.
The local schools that did not make it and have to offer their students the choice of attending another school this fall are Albert Gallatin Area School District’s Masontown Elementary School and both middle schools, Brownsville Area School District’s Central Elementary School, Connellsville Area School District’s senior high and two junior high schools, Uniontown Area School District’s Benjamin Franklin School and Central Greene School District’s Waynesburg Central Elementary School.
“This report gives us a snapshot of where we are and the progress we need to make in order to reach the NCLB goal of 100 percent of students proficient by 2014,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Vicki L. Phillips on the report’s release. “The results show that we have schools in every part of Pennsylvania doing well and schools in every part of Pennsylvania that need help in reaching these new expectations.”
Phillips explained that 35 percent of the students who took the PSSA in math earlier this year and 45 percent of the students who took the PSSA in reading had to score within the proficient or above ranges overall and in the subgroups that include ethnic, special needs and low-income students among the categories. She said the schools also had to log 95 percent participation in the test.
In kindergarten through eighth grade, schools had to show improvement in attendance, with the goal of achieving 95 percent. High schools had to demonstrate any level of improvement in graduation toward the goal of 95 percent. She stressed that all criteria had to be met for a school to have met the AYP goal this year.
Phillips also clarified that the list released Tuesday concerned all schools, was based solely on NCLB and considered only PSSA scores in the assessment category. Those criteria are compared to prior, similar lists that were related to schools that receive Title I federal aid, were based on the law that preceded NCLB and took into consideration a school district’s own assessments as well as the PSSA.
“This list represents a transition from one law to another, but there is clear criteria as we move on to next year,” she said.
The results confused some local school leaders, including Uniontown Area Superintendent Charles Machesky.
Machesky said Ben Franklin’s ranking surprised him, because he did not think the school was on a warning list last year, and he had the understanding a school had to be on a warning list one year before being placed on an improvement list the second year. He said Tuesday’s report noted Ben Franklin achieved AYP overall on the reading and math tests but missed the mark on attendance and on the breakdown of the student population into subgroups, although he said which particular group was not clear and he would need to analyze the report further.
Waynesburg Central Elementary School had a similar issue as Ben Franklin School, having met the overall achievement standard in reading and math but missing the benchmark for subgroups and attendance.
“We’ve been talking to the state to first of all go over the information and the reasons why we appear on the school improvement list,” said Central Greene Superintendent Dr. Jerome Bartley.
Albert Gallatin Superintendent Walter Vicinelly acknowledged this is the second year that Masontown Elementary School will need to offer its students the option of attending another school and that the state went a step further and listed that school as also having to offer its students supplemental services like tutoring.
However, he said Masontown made improvements and actually met the benchmark for math, participation in the test and attendance. He noted that the school was listed on the report as having made significant growth.
He discussed each school, saying Albert Gallatin’s Friendship Hill Elementary School showed improvement and no longer has to offer school choice as it did last school year, even though it is included on the warning list.
Also on the warning list were the district’s A.L. Wilson Elementary School, George J. Plava Elementary School and the high school.
D. Ferd Swaney and Smithfield elementaries were among those local schools that met AYP in all categories.
“We’ve been looking at each of the areas in each of the buildings and also looking at the targets and trying to analyze where we have needs,” he said.
Vicinelly said the school district will inform parents of their options as soon as they have formal direction from the state. He said last year, six or seven parents from Masontown and Friendship Hill combined expressed interest in school choice, but ultimately no one took advantage of that option.
Connellsville’s assistant superintendent, Jim Duncan, said the report released to the public is a summary but the report he received is a spreadsheet of 205 columns representing much information that school officials must decipher.
He said it is important to note that the high school met AYP in reading and math and the junior high schools both met the math criteria.
He said the district has continued to make improvements on the PSSA, and those efforts will continue and include computer tutorial programs, especially at the junior high schools.
Brownsville officials could not be reached for comment.
Ron Tomalis, U.S. Department of Education acting assistant secretary, elementary and secondary education, acknowledged that the school districts do not have much time to notify parents of their choices and get ready to respond before school starts in less than two weeks. Although some schools were marked for school choice last year, Tomalis said this is the first year the state’s NCLB plan has gone into full effect, and the information will go out as quickly as possible.
In the case where all the schools are being required to offer parents another choice like the middle/junior high school level at Albert Gallatin and Connellsville school districts, Tomalis said a school district is encouraged to offer other options. He suggested restructuring a school under a “school within a school” concept or taking advantage of technology and using distance learning.
The state allows a school district to have a cooperative agreement with another school district that could accept its students who opt to choose another school.
Meanwhile, Tomalis said the school improvement list is not a list of failing schools.
He also clarified that a school can meet AYP in reading and math overall but still be placed on the improvement list because of one of the other indicators like the graduation rate or because of the inadequate improvement of a segment of the student population, like low-income students.
“The law is called No Child Left Behind. It’s not called no school left behind,” he said. “It ensures all children are addressed.”