Local schools still making the grade
The goal is for every student in the school to be proficient in major subject areas, and for nine of every 10 students to graduate, by the year 2014, and so far, local schools are making the required progress towards that goal.
For a fifth consecutive year, every school in Scott County met the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in the 2007-2008 school year.
The State Department of Education on Monday announced whether schools and school districts across the state were in compliance with NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards. Some 80% of the schools in Tennessee were deemed to be in good standing, while 10.5% of the schools in the state were targeted after failing to meet AYP standards in 2007-’08, and 8% of the state’s schools were listed as high priority schools after failing to meet AYP for at least a second consecutive year.
AYP is a series of federally-mandated performance benchmarks in reading, math, English, and attendance and graduation rates. Collectively, the benchmarks measure each school’s progress towards NCLB’s eventual goal of a 100% student proficiency rate in reading and math and a 90% graduation rate by the end of the 2013-2014 school year.
AYP in Tennessee is determined by achievement tests administered to students in grades 3-8 towards the end of each school year. Students are tested for proficiency in math, reading and language arts. In addition, students in grades 5, 8 and 11 take a writing assessment test each year.
In total, there are 37 categories in which performance standards must be met by each school. However, some of those categories involve proficiency rates among minorities and students with disabilities. Schools may be exempt from those categories if the number of qualifying students fall below NCLB-mandated minimums.
On occasion, schools can be in good standing academically, yet still fail to meet AYP standards and find themselves targed by the state and federal Departments of Education. For example, there was some concern last year among Scott County education officials that a so-called “Goth scare” at Scott High School that resulted in multiple absences of a period of several days might hurt the school’s chances of meeting the NCLB-mandated 90% attendance rate.
In a news release Monday, the State Dept. of Education said that more Tennessee schools met the AYP requirements this year than last, despite the proficiency benchmarks being raised. This year marked the second time that proficiency standards increased — by an average of five-to-six percentage points in each academic category — since the program’s inception in 2002.
“Tennessee schools are showing excellent progress in meeting the demands of No Child Left Behind,” Education Commissioner Dr. Tim Webb said. However, Webb indicated that his department’s focus was not on the federally-mandated program.
“Tennessee’s primary focus remains on our state’s work to raise academic standards to which we hold students in order to prepare them for a better future after high school,” Webb said. “The education Tennessee students receive, not testing, is our mission.”
Webb’s comments reflected continuing criticism both inside and outside education circles that NCLB — bipartisn legislation that was championed in part, and signed into law, by President George W. Bush early in his administration — forces teachers to “teach to a test” rather than focusing on individualized learning needs. Critics say that various factors make the achievement tests poor litmus tests for whether a particular school is or isn’t performing well. Nevertheless, the federal mandate has forced educators in local school systems across the state and the nation to place more focus on meeting the NCLB standards. In Scott County, officials re-evaluated, and added to, the curriculum at Scott High after the school landed on the state’s targeted list in the first year of NCLB’s implementation. The school showed marked improvement by the following year, and no local school has since been targeted.
While no schools locally were placed on the targeted or high priority lists, several schools in surrounding counties are on the high priority list (the specific schools on the targeted list were not released by the Dept. of Education). Those schools included Clinton High School in Anderson County, and Campbell County High School, East LaFollette Elementary and Jellico High School in Campbell County.
Specific test scores for each school, including scores from the also controversial TVAAS (Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System) were not released, but will be made public later this year.