FOLLOW-UP ON SCHOOL PROGRESS REPORTS: Schools respond to test results

Administrators: Reality more complex than scores imply

By BY WAYNE BRYAN Staff Writer

Photo by David Huff / Contributing Photographer

Debbie Robbins, a sixth-grade science teacher at Lake Hamilton Middle School, answers a question for Hannah Gamberini. The school’s principal, Dwayne Curry, said his teachers do an excellent job teaching their students. The school met state testing standards in 2008-2009 but will have to meet standards again this year to be taken off the state’s Smart Accountability improvement scale.

ADVERSTISMENT

TRI-LAKES AREA — A school principal and a district administrator in schools that have failed to meet statewide achievement standards mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind laws say testing does not give a real assessment of the quality of education and, if continued, will establish unreachable standards.

The results of the Arkansas Department of Education’s new Smart Accountability testing, required by federal law, were released Oct. 9. Hundreds of schools across the state failed to meet adequate yearly progress testing standards and face consequences that can in time include state inclusion in day-to-day operations including staff changes, budget priorities and redirecting curricula.

The state Department of Education has been working on the Arkansas-designed program to aid the schools with substandard scores in preparation of the score results.

“There are two feelings at the Department of Education,” said Julie Thompson, spokeswoman for the Department of Education. “One is really excitement. I think there’s real potential for the state to help make a difference in some of these schools. And two, there is a lot of pressure because the state now has taken a lot of responsibility to help these schools in a way that they haven’t before.”

Some school administrators meanwhile respond by expressing frustration that expectations are arbitrary and said the testing standards do not take into account the individual capabilities of students, especially in special populations, or the actual progress being made by individual students.

“Teachers welcome accountability, but let’s be realistic,” said Dewayne Curry, principal at Lake Hamilton Middle School in Pearcy. “We have seen students come in and work hard and their teachers do a superior job. They made tremendous gains, but they are still not up to AYP standards, and we have to tell them they didn’t make it.”Lake Hamilton Middle School

Curry was the only principal contacted who was willing to answer questions about his school’s scores. He said the scores may not reflect the level of achievement being accomplished by challenged students.

Curry’s school was categorized as “targeted improvement achieving, year two, following this year’s state testing. This means Lake Hamilton Middle School has met the standards in this year’s testing, but state involvement and programs remain because of substandard test scores for students with disabilities in the year before.

Yet for the 2009-2009 school year, Lake Hamilton Middle School won an award for academic achievement in valued added education.

“We received $100 per student or $60,200 for academic achievement in April,” Curry said. “Our teachers did a superior job bringing the students forward, but it was not up to AYP standards.”

Curry said it can be unrealistic to expect all students with learning disabilities to reach grade levels in time for testing season.

Curry told of a letter he received from one parent last year after the state test results were published on the school Web site.

“The letter was from a father whose child was in our special classes, and he apologized to me and the school that his daughter didn’t meet AYP standards,” Curry said. “He said his daughter worked hard and that her teachers had helped her achieve so much, but that it wasn’t enough. It was heartbreaking.”

Curry doesn’t see a lot of change coming.

“Now there is an industry growing up around No Child Left Behind,” Curry said. “I don’t like to think about what we could have done with the money we spent on outside tutoring services.”

Curry added, however, that he still hopes new and better ways to track achievement can be developed.

“The answer is not having real great students, but to raise every student to a new level each year,” he said.

Hot Springs School District

Hot Springs Middle School failed to meet testing standards for the sixth year within three subpopulations of students recognized by the state testing program. Those are African-American and economically disadvantaged students as well as students with disabilities.

This places t he school into the “state directed” category for missing the federal standards over the years and hands over decision-making powers for the state education officials.

“When you get to the level of state-directed schools, there will be a much more hands-on approach in working (with the schools) to bring the school improvement specialists that will work with them very closely, if not day-to-day, then close to that, in finding ways to improve scores in their schools,” Thompson said.

At Hot Springs Middle School, there is a plan to bring in consultants to share new approaches to teach math and literacy skills to struggling students, said Joyce Craft, superintendent of the Hot Springs School District.

Even before this year, improvement specialists have met with administrators and teachers, and instructional teams have worked in the classroom with teachers.

When it comes to students with disabilities, the Hot Springs superintendent believes the testing doesn’t ref lect the progress actually made by the students.

“We, too, have high expectations for our students, and the teachers work very hard to achieve these standards,” Craft said. “Yet some students have capabilities that need more time to develop. This time component is not always factored in for those students.

“Teachers have made significant advancement with students, but the bar always gets set higher. We only need more time to accomplish what we need to do.”

The state and federal guidelines for achievement rise every year. By the 2013-2914 school year, students will have to achieve 100 percent of the established grade level scores to be considered an achieving school in Arkansas.

The students with disabilities subpopulation at the Oaklawn Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School did not meet the established statewide standards, and that factored in placing the school in the fourth years of the whole school intensive improvement category.

Craft said the school would continue its focus on that student group with a literacy program on the Internet and with other technology-based study components. The school also offers after-school programs and some students receive instruction in math or literacy during two periods of the day.

Hot Springs ’ Summit School is what classified as the alternative learning environment for not only the Hot Springs District but for all school districts in Garland County.

The school is in year four of the complete school improvement category with what is designated as the combined student population failing to reach state math standards in the latest tests.

Craf t said the teachers continue to seek better ways to reach the students, but the alternative school does not always have a long time to work with a student.

“We did not have the same students ever y yea r,” t he superintendent said. “The students return to their old schools or move out of the system entirely, but they take their tests with us and are our students.”

Craft said the district appealed the test scores for Hot Springs High School and the ratings of the school has gone to the alert category, changing the level of state involvement in the school to the lightest level.

‘In those stages, we’ve given the schools some pretty concrete guidelines concerning their options, but they have much more leeway in deciding which of those are appropriate for meeting the needs of their students,” Thompson said.

Some schools contacted did not want to answer questions about their state testing scores, while others deferred to school district officials. Several did not return calls inquiring about the scores.

- wbryan@arkansasonline.com

The Smart Accountability labels are:

-achieving: meeting standards for this year;

-alert: missing standards for the first year;

-targeted improvement: meeting standards for the combined population, but missing standards in math or literacy for 25 percent or fewer subgroups;

-whole school improvement: missing standards for the combined population or in more than 25 percent of the subgroups;

-targeted intensive improvement: targeted improvement schools that continue to miss standards for four years;

-whole school intensive improvement: whole school improvement schools that continue to miss standards for four years; and state directed: both targeted improvement and whole school improvement schools that continue to miss standards for five years or more.

Tri-Lakes, Pages 59 on 10/29/2009