School districts comment on performance

COLUMBIA BASIN - Columbia Basin school districts commented Friday on their WASL performance and a federally mandated improvement list.

According to the state superintendent's office, schools must make "adequate yearly progress" in reading and math to reach a federal target that every student in every school will have math and reading proficiency by 2014. A school missing the target two years in a row will move into improvement status, the state explained.

Moses Lake School District, Othello School District, Quincy School District, Wahluke School District and Warden School District are in improvement status.

Royal City and Grand Coulee Dam school districts are not on the list, but some schools within the districts are.

More schools, districts on list

According to the state, 628 schools and 57 school districts are on the list this year. In comparison, 280 schools and 30 school districts were on the list the previous year.

Moses Lake School District Superintendent Steve Chestnut said the number of schools and districts on the list increased because standards increased.

"In some cases, we missed (standards) by a point or a 10th of a point," he noted.

In reading, 76 percent of elementary school students were required to meet standards this year, compared with 64 percent last year, Chestnut said.

"We can't teach to a moving target," said Warden School District Superintendent Sandra Sheldon. "It takes time to align your curriculum."

Quincy School District Superintendent Burton Dickerson also said the standard is rising.

"It's now becoming a greater and greater challenge to rise to that level of performance," Dickerson said.

Another factor may be changes in minimum student populations required for adequate yearly progress subgroups, Dickerson said.

While schools can be evaluated in as many as 37 categories, a category requires a minimum number of students to be considered.

Dickerson said some categories require a smaller minimum of students to be considered than others.

"It's probably a combination of those factors, and again I'm not an expert on this," he said.

In addition to the other factors involved, grade levels can now be combined so a category can be considered, Sheldon said. For example, if a category takes 30 students to be considered, 10 students each in third through fifth grade can now add up to 30 students, Sheldon said.

Previously, if each grade level had less than the minimum number of students in a given category, the school would not be evaluated in the category.

On the positive side, having a state test allows schools to identify the strengths and needs of individual students, Sheldon said.

Recognizing achievement

Chestnut agreed with state Superintendent Terry Bergeson's opinion the No Child Left Behind Act does not recognize achievements within school districts.

Moses Lake School District administers 20 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) tests each year.

"Six of those 20 were at an all-time high for us," he said.

Wilson Creek School District Superintendent Linda McKay echoed similar sentiments. Wilson Creek is not on the list.

McKay said last year, 38 percent of students were required to meet the standard in middle school math. This year, 58.7 percent of students were required to meet the standard.

"A 20 percent growth in one year's time is incredible," McKay said. "That is substantial, and it does not reflect the individual growth that has taken place."

Wilson Creek staff focus on individual student growth, she noted.

"They might not have made standard, but they made growth, and that's cause for celebration," she said.

Schools must make "adequate yearly progress" in reading and math to reach a federal target that each student in every school will have math and reading proficiency by 2014, according to the state.

"I totally believe in that goal, but the reality is, you know we're not going to get every single student to that level," Chestnut said.

Dickerson said he too supports a goal to have 100 percent of students meeting standard. But believing all students will meet standard regardless of circumstances "may be a pretty tall order."

Sheldon said the target of 100 percent includes students in special education and students who are learning English as a second language.

Warden may have a third-grade student enroll who doesn't know English and never attended school, Sheldon said. The student is required to take the WASL the following year.

The student doesn't speak the language fluently and doesn't have the knowledge required to take the test, Sheldon noted.

Teachers become frustrated because they can see a student's progress and yet the WASL does not reflect the progress, she added.

Warden School District conducts a measure of academic progress twice a year.

"That measures the growth that students make within a year's time," she said.

Chestnut noted the percentage of students meeting standard fluctuates with each group of children taking the test.

For example, 60.5 percent of Longview Elementary School fourth-grade students met standard in reading this year. By comparison, about 73 percent met standard in the 2006-2007 school year. An even stronger percentage - about 84 percent - met standard in 2005-2006.

About 73 percent of fourth-grade students district-wide met standard on the reading WASL. Although the federal requirement was approximately 88 percent, the district's score is above state average.

"It's not bad," Chestnut said. "We're still not satisfied."

Grades 3, 4 and 5 are above state average in all scores, except for fifth-grade science, Chestnut noted.

In the case of fifth-grade science, the school district scored 3.5 percent below state average.

Dickerson said some numbers went up and some went down in Quincy schools.

"We would have liked to see more increases," he said. "We had a mixed set of results."

Dickerson noted state averages seemed stagnant or seemed to decrease, indicating the district was not out of sync with the rest of the state.