State Says Schools on Improvement List Increasing in Number
The number of Arkansas schools categorized as being in school improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation rose to 375 this year, for an increase of 50 from the year before, according to a news release from the Arkansas Department of Education on Friday.
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The number of Arkansas schools categorized as being in school improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation rose to 375 this year, for an increase of 50 from the year before, according to a news release from the Arkansas Department of Education on Friday.Arkansas has a total of 1,087 schools. Under No Child Left Behind, all students in the nation are to score proficient on their states' Benchmark Exams by the 2013-14 school year and, to that end, schools are mandated to make "adequate yearly progress" toward reaching that goal.In Arkansas, the bar to reach adequate yearly progress, or AYP, is raised each year, and this year the percentage that must be proficient to make AYP ranges, depending on grade and test, from 46.63 percent to 55 percent. Those marks must be hit by the test-taking student body as a whole and also within individual subgroups of test-taking students in literacy and in mathematics. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years are placed in school improvement status.In Ashley County, there are five schools in one of the various levels of improvement. For the Crossett School District, Daniel Intermediate is in improvement, but met standards this year. Crossett High School did not make the required average yearly progress in literacy or math for the combined population and also failed to make the required scores in the African-American and economically disadvantaged subgroups. For Daniel Intermediate, the problem is the literacy and math scores by the economically disadvantaged subgroups.At Norman Junior High, the problem is in literacy scores for the combined population as well as the African-American and economically disadvantaged subgroups.In the Hamburg School District, Allbritton Upper Elementary and Hamburg Junior High are on the school improvement lists. At Allbritton, the problem is in both the literacy and math scores for African-American students. Allbritton is in the fourth year of school improvement. At the junior high, the school met standards for this year, but will have to meet the requirements for a second year in order to be removed from the list.All other Hamburg schools including Noble, Portland, Wilmot and Hamburg High, and other Crossett schools met the requirements for this year.All of the Ashley County schools met the AYP requirements for other subgroups including whites, Hispanics, limited English proficiency and students with disabilities or else did not have enough students in those End-of-Course Exams are administered to all algebra I, geometry, algebra II and biology students. All of these tests save for the algebra II and biology End-of-Course Exams are used in AYP calculations for the status model.Adequate yearly progress, which is measured by increased performance on the exams, must occur for the combined population of test-takers as well as for test-takers within each of the following subgroups: economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, limited English proficient, African-American, Caucasian and Hispanic. If any of these groups fails to make AYP in mathematics or in literacy, the entire school is considered not to have made AYP.Subgroups are considered in the AYP calculation when they include 40 or more such students in the school.When a school fails to make AYP for two consecutive years, then they are considered to be in "school improvement." A school must make AYP for two consecutive years to be removed from the school improvement list.Because Arkansas was approved for use of a growth model beginning with last year's school improvement calculations, schools may avoid the "in need of improvement label" if their students have achieved sufficient academic growth from the previous year. This year, 53 schools made AYP because of use of the growth model."It is really encouraging to see how many schools are moving their students toward proficiency," Dr. James said. "The growth model allows those schools that perhaps are w