CASD officials work to achieve state standards
CALIFORNIA – The California Area School District is asking the Intermediate Unit 1 to help it develop an educational plan for its special needs elementary students to help the district meet state requirements for adequate yearly progress (AYP). For the second year in a row, the California Area School District failed to meet the AYP standards set by the state, placing it in the “Improvement 1” category, despite the fact that both schools in the district met the state standards. Assistant Superintendent Joetta Britvich said the discrepancy between the schools passing but the district failing comes from the fact that the state only considers special needs students a subgroup that needs to meet the state criteria if there are 40 or more special needs students in a school. Neither the elementary/middle school nor the high school have 40 special needs students, but when the entire district population is considered, there are more than 40 special needs students, adding an extra criteria to be met by the district.
Districts face an escalating set of consequences, including the possibility of a state-mandated change of governance, if they repeatedly fail to meet state AYP standards.
“We were on the warning list last year for special education. We’ve restructured our special education model for the better. We have more inclusion and we have the students working through the Intermediate Unit. We’re having meetings with the IU. Our administration and teachers together so we are working as one unit,” said Dr. Tim Marks, the superintendent of the California Area School District.
The AYP standards include attendance or graduation rate, test participation and student performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test.
According to the state Department of Education Web site:
“AYP requires that all groups of children reach proficiency in reading and mathematics, hence the phrase ‘no child left behind.’ These groups include all racial and ethnic backgrounds, students with limited English proficiency, economically disadvantaged students and special education students. (When these subgroups contain fewer than 40 students the subgroup is not separately evaluated for AYP.)”
The Intermediate Unit 1 (IU1) provides special education and other services to 25 school districts in Fayette, Greene and Washington counties.
IU 1 executive director Dr. Lawrence O’Shea said that 12 of the districts failed to meet their AYP benchmarks.
“For 11 of those 12, it’s a result of their special education subgroup,” O’Shea said. “When you think of the needs of special education students, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. When you look at the general education students and the special education students over time, the gap between them widens.”
O’Shea said more material from the state standards will be included in the special education instruction, with his staff examining the materials used in the general education classrooms in the California Area School District to see if it is appropriate for use with the special education students. In addition, O’Shea said the IU 1 teachers will be trained in the Success for All program used by the district.
O’Shea said there is some debate about requiring all students to take the PSSA test and to achieve a rating of proficient.
“Over all, the idea of taking a single measure to measure the performance of an individual or a group of students is not widely advocated. It is, however, what’s mandated by the state and federal governments,” O’Shea said. “When you have a student who is so far below the standard being tested, it is a frustrating experience for the student and can be demoralizing.”
O’Shea said there is an alternative test available for students at the moderate to severe cognitive level, but that should only apply to 1 percent of a student population.
“You generally have 15 to 18 percent of your population that is impaired in some way,” O’Shea said.
“When you look at children with disabilities, you have to look at what they are able to learn.”
O’Shea said the California Area School District needs to have at least 10 percent of the special education students who scored at the basic or below basic level on the last PSSA to move to the proficient level on the next PSSA test in order to achieve the AYP required by the state.