Tom Miller was having lunch with his wife in Missoula last month when the Corvallis Middle School principal first heard the news.
His wife looked up from her newspaper and told him to take a gulp. Then she informed him that his school was listed as one of 179 Montana schools that failed to meet new standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Just two years ago, the Bitterroot Valley school was on another list. The U.S. Department of Education recognized it as a Blue Ribbon School, one of only 172 public and private schools in the nation to earn the department's highest accolade and the only one in Montana that year.
But as far as the new federal law is concerned, that doesn't matter.
The school made the list because a subgroup of its eighth-graders - made up of fewer than a dozen students in special education - didn't meet the same test score target that students without disabilities are expected to achieve on the same test.
Perkins knows her school isn't failing but some parents might now think so.
"It doesn't concern me because I know the criteria they look at is not necessarily relevant to the education I know the kids are getting there," she said. "All of my kids went through the middle school there."
She also was actively involved in her children's education and served on the parent advisory committee at the middle school, so she is familiar with the education system, she said.
Under the federal law, whether a school achieves "adequate yearly progress" is based on a three-year average of reading and math test scores in grades 4, 8 and 11. Targets rise each year until 2014, the year 100 percent of students must achieve proficiency. Schools that miss the mark two consecutive years face sanctions.
The law's challenge is a formidable one because not only does a school or district have to improve its test scores annually, each must also break out test scores for its subgroups of students by race, ethnicity, income, disability and limited fluency in English.
In some states, a particular group of students isn't large enough to constitute a subgroup until its size reaches at least 40. But in Montana, state officials chose 10 as the minimum number, and that has raised the ire of some schools.
In addition, NCLB is judging schools in dozens of other areas that are part of an intricate matrix of 55 different categories which includes test participation rates and high school graduation rates.
At Corvallis, Miller disagrees with the subgroup requirement for students with disabilities because, as it stands now, just one low-scoring student can significantly decrease the average for the entire subgroup and ultimately lead to a whole school being labeled as failing.
He also questions how the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills can be used to assess students with disabilities when the federal government previously determined it was an invalid measure to use to evaluate students to determine if they have a disability.
"We cannot use the Iowa tests' scores to place students in the program," he said. "Consequently, it doesn't make sense to use those same scores to determine effectiveness of the program and the school."
Students with disabilities should be measured individually for their own individual progress because they differ in their academic challenges, he said.
"I think there will be a lot of district appeals," he said.
Of the state's 862 public schools, 21 percent failed to satisfy the federal government's definition of "adequate yearly progress" - so far. More than 200 schools are still waiting to be classified.
Across the country, the percentage of schools making the list varies dramatically. In Minnesota, just 8 percent of the schools didn't show enough progress. In Florida, 85 percent of the public schools made the list.
Under the law, once a school that receives Title I aid for disadvantaged students does not make adequate progress for two consecutive years, its students become eligible for transfer to a higher-performing public school. The district is required to then spend up to 20 percent of its federal aid to Title I schools to pay those transportation costs.
Noncompliance in third and fourth consecutive years may result in reorganization of school staff and structure.
Many schools in western Montana ended up on the list because students in the subgroup of special education didn't score high enough or because fewer than 95 percent of students took the test.
Principals and superintendents interviewed all said they agree with the concept of No Child Left Behind - which is to help all students reach their highest potential.
"The intent and purpose of NCLB is a good one. There is no doubt about it," said Missoula County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Cheryl Wilson. "The devil, of course, is in the detail, but we'll work to develop solutions and do what is right."
At MCPS, 13 of the district's 18 schools made the list of schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress.
Big Sky High School tested less than 95 percent of its students, and a subgroup of students with special needs failed to score high enough. Sentinel faced similar problems.
Seeley-Swan High School and Hellgate High School didn't meet the 80 percent graduate rate requirement.
At Lowell Elementary, overall test scores reached the first targets set by the state and federal government, but its subgroup of students with disabilities didn't score high enough.
At C.S. Porter Middle School, the subgroups of American Indian students and students with special needs missed their target scores in reading and math. At Washington Middle School, those same subgroups missed their first-year target scores in math.
Wilson and Superintendent Jim Clark say they recognize the district has areas it needs to focus on across the district, but they are also concerned that people may unfairly begin to blame some of the subgroups when a school is classified as needing improvement.
Schools should measure the progress of students receiving special education through the use of individual education plans as required by federal law, Wilson said, "not with a test that we already know the student will have difficulty performing well on."
"We just don't want to see people unfairly blame the special education students or their teachers for this," she said.
The district is taking the list and subgroup scores seriously and has already begun working on the areas that need improvement, school officials said.
"Absolutely," Wilson said. "We are doing work now to train teachers to be more effective with minority and special populations. We have training already set up to help increase literacy in schools for those students."
"My perception is that all of the schools have really been working hard to try to adapt to the requirements of No Child Left Behind," said Mike Maxwell, Franklin Elementary School's superintendent. "Both parents and teachers have worked really hard. We have that common goal of kids growing and improving academically."
Maxwell was disappointed when he learned Franklin was put on the list of schools in need of improvement.
"The frustrating part is that all of our kids who took the test did excellent," he said. "All of the parents, the teachers and the kids ... we just did really, really well with our kids. But because just two kids missed taking the test, this now reflects on the entire school."
Franklin, a smaller school with a fourth-grade class of just 41 students, is a Title I school in which 77 percent of the students are from families that have low enough incomes to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
"Franklin is a low-income school and we struggle with all the issues that go with that," he said. Yet the school enjoys a high level of parent involvement and its proficiency scores topped the statewide averages and many of those across MCPS in the five subject areas tested.
"We feel we have made some great progress," he said.
Lewis & Clark Elementary School faced a situation similar to Franklin's. Principal Karen Allen needed 81 fourth-graders to take the math test, but only 79 did. That put Lewis & Clark on the list.
"We are ahead of the reading targets and math targets ... every target I know of except that one box out of 55," Allen said.
She and many other principals weren't aware they would be judged on the 95 percent testing attendance requirement until this summer, long after spring testing.
Schools do try to test every student they can and schedule makeups within the allowable time frame, she said, but last spring the testing window set by the state ended up the week before spring break.
Parent-teacher conferences fell within that makeup time frame.
"It's not that tests don't matter," Allen said. "It's that if the assessment process isn't reasonable, then people begin to say they don't matter."
"We all fully believe in the concept and that we have an obligation to ensure that no child be left behind," she said.
But when schools that perform well and are strongly committed to meeting their obligations are penalized for reasons that don't seem fair, it begins to erode the fabric that the school community worked so hard to put together, she said.
"I think it deflates people," she said.
Allen will send a newsletter to parents that explains the school's status in detail.
After that, she said she and her staff will continue to try to fulfill their job of making sure every child has as much opportunity to learn as they can.
And next year, she plans to do everything she can to make sure that the little box linked to testing participation rates has the right percentile in it, she said.
"No Child Left Behind is a very prescriptive law and one of the requirements is no less than 95 percent of the students must be tested," said Jo Ann Webb, a U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.
Even if high-performing schools end up on a list of failing schools as a result of a provision in the law, Webb said there are no plans currently in the works to change it.
"These are the minimum requirements," she said. "It's a tough law, but it is designed to help America's neediest kids. Some states are facing challenges that other states aren't but we're working with those states to help them meet those challenges."
Increasing test participate rates is easier for a school to do than raise academic scores in reading, said Joe Lamson, state Office of Public Instruction communications director.
"(The latter) is a far more daunting education task," he said.
Lamson hopes the federal government will at least consider changing the requirement that students enrolled in special education programs must achieve the same targets as students without special needs.
Some of those students just aren't going to be able to achieve the test scores that the federal government has mandated, he said.
"Kids are doing amazing things nowadays, but for some that is just not going to happen," he said. "That's why there is a considerable push back from the states to change that part of the law right now."
As for the state's decision to use "10" as the minimum population to constitute a subgroup, Lamson said the state does plan to revisit that issue.
"That's one of the things we will take a look at because we have heard some states have been granted a different number," he said.
In the Bitterroot Valley, Florence High School is on the now notorious list of schools that failed to show adequate yearly progress. Only 93 percent of its students took the test last spring. While calculating attendance that day, two seniors were inadvertently counted as juniors. The two students were enough to drop the percentage below the required 95 percent, so Superintendent Steve Gaub has submitted an appeal to the state.
"We made it in graduation rate and in test scores, but not in percentage taking the test," he said.
The elementary and junior high schools at Florence-Carlton are also on the "needs improvement' list. Their subgroup of special education students didn't score high enough to meet this year's target scores.
"We didn't have any alternative testing for them," Gaub said. "We gave them the regular test. Next year we may make accommodations for them or do something with alternative testing where possible."
In Lake County, Arlee's junior high and high schools made the list. One of their eighth-grade subgroups - students with limited English proficiency - just missed the target test scores and Arlee High School's graduation rate wasn't high enough.
The high school's proficiency scores matched or exceeded statewide averages, but under NCLB, schools must achieve a minimum graduation rate of 80 percent using a calculation that compares freshmen-year and senior-year enrollment figures. Arlee's graduation rate was 68 percent.
Arlee Superintendent Gordon Friberg said one of the high school's major challenges is a 20 percent mobility rate: Students transfer to other districts, leave the state, enroll in alternative programs such as Job Corps or drop out.
"We have one of the lowest dropout rates in the state, especially when we're looking at Native American schools," Friberg said. "But if you have transience or mobility, it is going to affect your graduation rate."
He has until Sept. 29 to appeal or ask the state to review the data and he plans to do just that.
Meanwhile, Friberg said he intends to focus on improving student learning and better tracking of why a student leaves the high school.
"The things we are concerned with are those that relate to the students meeting requirements for reading," he said, noting the schools have developed an early intervention program.
"We want to maintain the attendance rate and continue improving math and reading scores and improve our record keeping of why students leave the district so we can address that graduation rate," he said.
"We're hoping that will make the difference."
Reporter Jane Rider can be reached at 523-5298 or at jrider@missoulian.com
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