Schools want credit for progress

Friday, July 29, 2005 | 10:46 a.m.

The Clark County School District wants to change how Nevada measures "Adequate Yearly Progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The district wants schools to get credit for making substantial progress even if minimum test score requirements are not met.

As first reported Thursday by the Sun, two-thirds of the district's 320 comprehensive schools, alternative schools and special programs failed to make "Adequate Yearly Progress," or AYP, under the provisions set down by the state for the 2004-05 academic year.

Of the 205 schools that did not make adequate progress, 98 were placed on the "watch" list because of low scores for a first year. There were also 13 campuses in a third consecutive year of low scores.

Schools that do not make adequate progress face sanctions, ranging from having to offer students transfers to more successful schools to being required by the state Education Department to replace key staff, including the principal.

"The situation is serious, and we are facing a significant challenge," said Agustin Orci, co-interim superintendent for the district. "The bar is only going to continue to rise, and we must rise with it."

The district also had 19 campuses rated as "high achieving" for either strong test scores overall or marked improvement in student performance.

Schools must meet benchmarks for overall performance and participation as well as for subgroups of students, broken down by ethnicity, special education status, limited English proficiency and those qualifying for free and reduced-price meals.

Schools that miss the test score targets but reduce the number of nonproficient students by at least 10 percent are considered to have made adequate progress under the state's "safe harbor" provision.

Two schools, Hyde Park Middle School and Rhodes Elementary School, did not make adequate progress this year because of shortfalls in a single area: the English test scores of special education students.

Under the federal education law, 100 percent of all public school students must demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics by the 2013-14 academic year.

States were given some leeway in determining their paths to that goal with some, like Nevada, opting for steady increases in minimum scores on standardized tests.

Elementary schools and middle schools are judged using national tests, while high schools are rated based on results from the Nevada State High School Proficiency Exam.

Other states use what's known as the "growth assessment" model, which allows schools to make adequate progress, provided they improve substantially over their prior year's performance.

But schools that otherwise show strong improvement may still fall short of making adequate progress, Orci said. Switching to a growth assessment model could change that.

"We want to get away from a 'the glass is half-empty' mentality (and change) to a 'the glass is half-full' mentality,' Orci said Thursday.

Conversations are already under way with the Nevada Education Department, Orci said.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, said he backed the growth assessment model when Nevada was first devising its AYP plan back in 2001. But federal education officials at that time were not accepting state plans that were not based on "hard" targets, Rheault said.

Since then the federal Education Department has approved a small number of state plans that are based on growth assessment models, but with "lots of strings attached," Rheault said.

As for Clark County's desire to change the state's AYP definition, Rheault said he is studying how other states won federal approval for their changes to see if there may be a pattern for Nevada to follow.

"If it's something that is viable and has a chance of fed approval, we'll support it," Rheault said.

While there may be changes down the road, Clark County schools will continue to struggle to meet the progress requirements as they stand now, Orci said.

As an example, he cited Rancho High School. While the school made dramatic gains across the board in both test scores and participation rates for the 2004-05 academic year, it wasn't enough to qualify for AYP.

Rancho reduced its number of total students who were not proficient in English overall by just under 25 percent. When broken down by ethnicity, the English test score results were even more dramatic, with the percentage of nonproficient students plummeting 51 percent for whites, 47.6 percent for Asians and Pacific Islanders, 21.5 percent for blacks and 20 percent for Hispanics.

There were also improvements in student math scores, with Rancho's overall number of nonproficient students dropping 17.5 percent. As in English, white students showed the most improvement in math, with the percentage of nonproficient students down 39 percent.

Rancho Principal Robert Chesto noted that 2,000 of his school's 3,200 students have limited proficiency in English. Adding more complications is the fact that roughly 1,000 of the school's students withdraw each year and are replaced by newcomers.

"We're trying to hit a target that's constantly moving," Chesto said.

Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association representing the majority of the district's teachers, said Chesto's concerns are mirrored by educators at dozens of other campuses.

She recalled that while teaching at Bridger Middle School the student turnover was so high that in one year only 11 percent of the school's eighth graders had been at the campus since they were sixth graders.

"We're supposed to be teaching perfect children by 2014, and that's never going to happen," Holloway said. "It's more important for schools to show improvement than to hit some arbitrary number."

In order to help the district's educators direct their efforts, Orci said Thursday he planned to "freeze, reduce and re-focus the number of instructional programs in our schools."

Specialists, teachers and administrators from throughout the district will be asked which programs are doing the most good and which may be redundant, Orci said.

Holloway praised Orci's plan to pull back on the number of instructional programs educators are expected to use at their schools.

"Every year we have to learn a different one," Holloway said. "We need to give some of these programs a chance to work and not change them at somebody's whim because they went to a conference and heard some exciting new idea."

Walt Rulffes, co-interim superintendent, said the district needs to examine the "best practices" of its schools and weed out the clutter that isn't working.

That includes taking a closer look at the district's most successful school for the 2004-05 academic year: Agassi College Preparatory Academy. The charter school's middle school program is the only district campus to be named "exemplary," the state department of education's top designation. In order to receive the honor a school must have at least 40 percent of its students score in the top 25 percent nationally on standardized tests.

Perry Rogers, chairman of Agassi Prep's board of directors, said he was thrilled by the designation. Agassi Prep spends an average of $8,500 per student, supplementing state funding with private donations. The Clark County School District spends an average of $5,989 per student.

"We have to talk about two things in Nevada," Rogers said. "Adequate funding and the accountability that comes with that funding. That's the only way we're going to see real change in student performance."

Rulffes said the district would be taking a closer look at Agassi Prep's program to see what could be learned. One of the purposes of charter schools is to serve as incubators for new approaches, Rulffes said.

Agassi Prep has the benefit of smaller class sizes and campus, both factors that have been linked with improved student achievement in various studies, Rulffes said.

"I welcome charter schools, I welcome choice and I welcome competition," Rulffes said. "Given their performance, we should be studying what they're doing

At the district's other charter schools the results were mixed. Odyssey's online program was listed as "needs improvement" for a second year. Explore Knowledge Academy's elementary program was placed on the "watch" list while its middle school was rated "high achieving" and the high school made AYP. Keystone Academy, serving students in rural Sandy Valley, made AYP.