Test scores released by the state Office of Public Instruction on Thursday showed Lolo, Bonner and DeSmet elementary districts failing to make adequate yearly progress on last year's math and reading tests.
The news left administrators throughout Missoula County scratching their heads. After getting poor marks in 2005, Hellgate and Sentinel high schools got off the watch list by making adequate yearly progress in 2006. But Big Sky High School missed the threshold this year in its special education classes, even though it passed last year.
A similar situation played out in the MCPS elementary district. Only Lowell Elementary School and C.S. Porter and Cold Springs middle schools failed to make AYP, while Washington Middle School made it off the watch list. The elementary district as a whole joins the high school district on the “Corrective Action” list.
Federal No Child Left Behind laws require all public schools to give standardized reading and math tests to children in grades three through eight, and to high school sophomores. A set percentage of those students must score proficient or advanced on the tests to make adequate yearly progress. In Montana, that's the MontCAS test given in March and April.
One year of missing AYP gets a school on the watch list. It must notify the public of its status and review its five-year education plan. A second consecutive year of missed AYP moves it to the “Improvement Year One” list. Schools on that list must allow students to transfer to other schools, spend 10 percent of their Title I funds on teacher training, start a teacher mentoring program and consider adding after-school or summer school programs.
After a fourth consecutive year of inadequate progress, the district gets on the “Corrective Action” list. Its sanctions include all of the above with an order for the district administration to enforce changes.
That AYP passing threshold increases each year. For 2006, at least 74 percent of the students must have passed the reading test, while 51 percent must have done so on the math test.
But there are also 11 subgroups in the federal rules that must make adequate yearly progress - if there are enough of them in a school or district to be monitored. If there are 40 such students at the school or district level, they must be measured. In Montana, the main groups are low-income and Native American families, special education students, and English-language learners.
That's how a large majority of elementary students can make AYP, but the district as a whole can fail. It's not a percentage of the total, but a hard number: 40 students - whether the subject is Lowell Elementary's 225 children or MCPS' roughly 4,000. And in the case of most Missoula-area schools in AYP disfavor, it's the number of children in special education programs.
Of those sanctions, MCPS already does all of them. Teacher training and mentoring are part of the budget. For the past two years, it has been putting teachers on special assignment to become trainers of fellow teachers in struggling classrooms. Those teams are deployed wherever test scores or teacher observations show a need, according to MCPS Assistant Superintendent Gail Becker.
“We really do take that seriously,” Becker said. “As far as a sanction, it's more of a guarantee - it causes us to demonstrate that we're doing it. It focuses things, and that's a good thing.”
In many cases, those changes have paid off. After a couple years of AYP black marks, C.S. Porter Middle School has made big changes in the way it spots students who need extra reading or math help, and gets it to them. While it remains on the “Improvement Year One” list, it has also been recognized by the state Office of Public Instruction as a distinguished Title I school for its overall increase in test scores.
MCPS special education staff do more testing in first and second grades for reading and math problems that can be fixed before a child formally qualifies for special education status. That both helps the child and keeps the school district's special education numbers down.
And watching those numbers is getting to be a high-stakes concern. Becker said MCPS appealed the state's version of Missoula test results for Hellgate, Big Sky and Lowell because of apparent discrepancies. It won in the case of Hellgate, showing the state's estimate of the number of sophomores taking the test was incorrect.
Controlling for subgroup numbers is much harder, especially for small districts.
“Overall, I think the school did very well,” said Lolo Elementary School Superintendent Mike Magone, whose district did not make AYP this year. “If I do have a frustration with the No Child Left Behind Act, it's how it holds special needs students to the same expectations as regular students. I don't think that's appropriate.”
The view was echoed at Bonner Elementary District, which also missed AYP because of its special education scores.
“These are the students that have the IEP (individual education plans) because they're cognitively delayed,” Bonner Superintendent Doug Ardiana said. “Their best (score on the MontCAS) might be 40 percent, not
51 percent. By their IEP, that 40 could be huge.”
Bonner and Lolo are on the watch list, meaning they missed AYP last year after making it in previous years. DeSmet Elementary School also joined that list this year.
“We switched our math curriculum last year, so we knew this might be a year with not-as-high scores,” DeSmet Principal Rose Woodford said. The small school between Missoula and Frenchtown serves a large number of low-income families. That's one of the most important subgroups measured by the federal rules, because it's also the main recipient of federal money through the Department of Education's Title I assistance program. Ironically, it's also the program that has seen some of the biggest reductions in federal funding.
For example, Bonner Elementary School received $82,897 in Title I dollars in 2003-04. This year, that's down by half to $41,758.
“That's the money to help those kids,” Ardiana said. “We're expected to do more with less. That burden is landing on our local taxpayers.”
And the thresholds continue to climb. According to the current version of federal law, 100 percent of public school children must score proficient or above on their state tests by 2014.
“As they move the testing to different levels, you're going to see larger and larger populations that are showing up (missing AYP),” Lolo's Magone said. “I'm real pleased with the work our students and teachers are doing. And if we had more resources, we could probably do more. But I don't think you can ever get all of your kids up to that level.”
Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on No Child Left Behind test scores, which were released Thursday. Friday we look at how Missoula schools fared, and the ramifications of those test results. On Saturday, we will look at western Montana and the rest of the state.
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