‘Needs improvement’ list grows

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

Mirroring results in Clark County, the number of Nevada schools labeled as "needing improvement" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act skyrocketed this year to 122 campuses, up from 26 in 2003.

There was a silver lining in the results released Monday by the Nevada Department of Education -- the number of schools on the state's "watch list" for a single year's low test scores dropped to 103 from 198 in the previous year.

Of the 198 schools on the 2002-03 watch list, 97 failed to show sufficient academic achievement for a second straight year and were labeled "needs improvement" campuses.

But 101 schools reported enough improvement to satisfy the federal and state requirements and shed the negative label.

"I was very surprised," State Superintendent Keith Rheault said Monday. "We were expecting the big jump on the 'needs improvement' side but I thought the number of 'watch list' schools would go up quite a bit, too. We still have a ways to go but this is certainly good news."

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the nation's public schools must show "adequate yearly progress" on standardized tests both campus-wide and by subgroups, including ethnic groups, special education or low-income status and non-native English speakers. All schools must have 100 percent of students proficient in English language arts and mathematics by the 2013-14 academic year.

Schools that do not make adequate progress for one year are placed on the "watch list." A second, consecutive year of low scores moves the campus to the "needs improvement" list. After three years of low scores the state education department sends a review team to school and makes recommendations. Sanctions increase with each successive year on the list, including the replacement of the school's principal. After five years on the list the federal education department is allowed to take over the school's operations.

Of the state's 568 campuses, 214 -- 37.7 percent -- did not make adequate progress on a combination of standardized tests for the 2003-04 academic year.

In the previous year state education department officials were able to handle the work load of reviewing the "needs improvement" schools and making recommendations, Rheault said. But with 122 campuses now on that list, extra help is needed, Rheault said.

State education officials will ask the 2005 Legislature to fund two additional school improvement consultants, Rheault said. In the meantime the education department is devising regional teams to handle site visits and reviews, Rheault said.

Last week the Clark County School District released its 2003-04 AYP results, including the names of 82 campuses that were deemed "needs improvement" and another 59 schools on the "watch list." In all 43 percent of the district's schools did not show 'AYP' were identified as being at least the first year of not making AYP.

In addition to meeting student achievement goals, the adequate yearly progress requirement demands that schools show a minimum participation rate of 95 percent, both overall and by each subgroup. Of the 214 schools in the state that did not make adequate progress for the 2003-04 academic year, 64 were flagged solely because the participation requirement was not met.

"We've been focusing on curricular improvements, we might have taken attendance and particiaption a little bit for granted," said Gary Waters, president of the State Board of Education. "Once we address that I think we'll see the (number of schools on the watch and needs improvement) lists plummet."

The federal education reform, signed into law in January 2002, has been criticized as unrealistic and unfair. It's "statistically impossible" for 100 percent of students to ever be expected to test at the proficient level, and schools can be designated as failing to make adequate progress by falling short in just one of the 135 achievement categories, Waters said.

"It's been a mix of good and evil," Waters said. "The good news is it focuses on kids who need to be focused on. The bad news is it has a tendency to label schools and that makes people very angry, because the labels usually aren't accurate."

Nevada also had 12 schools designated as "exemplary," a designation reserved for campuses that show not only stellar achievement overall but also significantly reduce the percentage of students who fail to show proficiency on state tests. Another 69 campuses met only one of those two criteria and were named as "high achieving."

The Clark County School District had three "exemplary" campuses -- Garret and Lyon middle schools and Advanced Technologies Academy, a magnet high school. The district had 19 campuses designated as "high achieving."