10/12/04 -- Many school leaders across the country that have been struggling to raise test scores and get schools off their state's "needs improvement" lists now find their district as a whole has been identified as failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP).
Springfield, Ill., school district, for example, is on a preliminary state board of education list of school districts that did not make AYP because it didn't meet acceptable gains in student achievement in three of 30 categories: black students in reading and students with disabilities in reading and in math.
"We're not pleased to be on anyone's list," says Assistant Superintendent Sue Dole. "But we're very positive about the progress we've made and our principals' abilities as instructional leaders. There are things to celebrate and things to work on."
Percentages of districts failing to make AYP under state criteria for implementing the No Child Left Behind Act vary widely. Only 18 of the 1,056 districts in California are identified as failing to make AYP, while 80 percent of the districts in North Carolina and 100 percent of those in Alabama are on state lists.
A key factor leading all 130 districts in Alabama to be labeled as failing to make AYP is that "local schools did not understand how the state would calculate the test participation rate," says Susan Salter, a spokesperson with the Alabama Association of School Boards.
The state used an enrollment count on a day in February, even though the testing wasn't done until late March or early April, Salter says. So even though some schools had everyone show up on the testing day, they were still listed as failing to meet the NCLB requirement for 95 percent testing participation.
"We didn't realize how serious a problem it would be until the scores came in," Salter says. If the participation issue was removed, "a significant higher number of schools would have made AYP -- 949 as opposed to 319 of the state's 1,361 schools.
In addition, because Alabama is a year behind in completing its new reading and math tests, AYP outcomes were based on a combination of student test scores on both the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10) and the new state assessments, further complicating the issue.
"We're veterans in high-stakes testing, but the rules changed and the procedures are complex," Salter says.
Districts that fail to make AYP must develop an improvement plan that includes instructional practices based on scientifically based research and must use 10 percent of their Title I funds on professional development targeted to raising test scores. Districts that don't improve face an escalating series of sanctions leading to state takeover.
Dole says Springfield's "districtwide improvement plan" must address how the district will get its schools off the list of schools in need of improvement. She says the district already has several measures in place -- including professional development and improvements in the curriculum and instructional plan -- but needs to put it all together into a single document.
Among districts that fail to make AYP, all of the schools in a district could also fail to make AYP or none could. It all depends on the extent to which subgroup test scores fall short when consolidated across the district.
The Halifax County school district, a rural district in northeastern North Carolina, failed to make AYP because it fell short in four of 41 targets, says Tyrana Battle, director of testing and accountability.
Ten of Halifax County's 15 schools made AYP. One school, Enfield Middle School, failed to make AYP by 79 one hundredths of a point -- a weighted composite -- even though most test scores rose over the previous year, Battle says.
The district's biggest challenge is raising the achievement level of students in special education, which make up more than 10 percent of enrollment, says Superintendent Willie J. Gilchrist.
According to Halifax County school officials, two of the biggest obstacles in raising student achievement are insufficient funding and the difficulty of retaining teachers.
If the district had more money, Battle says, schools would be able to raise test scores for special education students by having smaller class sizes and by providing more tutoring, classroom resources, technology, and after-school programs.
The district has already put an improvement plan in place, Gilchrist says. Among initiatives under way are benchmarking tests geared to district standards at least every six weeks for grades 6-12 and training sessions for department heads, teachers, and students to help them understand test data.
John Murdoch, superintendent of Idaho Falls School District 91 in Idaho, says his district failed to make AYP because two junior high schools missed in a few categories and Skyline High School missed in one category -- fewer than five Hispanic students failed to reach the target on the 10th-grade math test.
The district sent letters to parents of all 2,750 students enrolled in any of the three schools telling them they have the option of transferring to better-performing schools, Murdoch says. Only two students requested to transfer -- and neither one had low test scores.
"The implications [of the district being identified as failing to make AYP] are minor," Murdoch says. The district submitted a plan to the state outlining proposed interventions to raise student achievement. "These are things we would do anyway," he says.
The district has already implemented a $100,000 language acquisition lab and this summer expanded summer school from four weeks to six weeks.
While Murdoch says he "agrees with the moral imperative of the law -- that no child should be left behind," he says "some points of the law aren't realistic." For example, if students with disabilities are achieving at high levels, "maybe they shouldn't be in that category."
Having his district labeled as failing to make AYP "means nothing," he says. "The law is unclear about what it means for a student to be 'behind.'"
This year, three Springfield schools failed to make AYP. Two of them are in corrective action, including one school managed by Edison for the past five years. The district has no plans to cut its ties with Edison, Dole says. "It was a challenging school to start with. It has a good principal, and staff members are making progress. It takes time."
With regard to the morale at the schools that failed to make AYP, Dole says, "It's very disheartening for the faculty who have worked so hard. They are working hard to keep up with a target that keeps moving."
But she says there are positive aspects of NCLB. "There is an urgency for change, and it has given us a lot of disaggregated data that hasn't been available before. That is extremely helpful."
"The bottom line is we're doing a much better job of meeting students' needs," Dole says. "As a whole, the district is seeing higher scores in math and reading. Students are not failing across the board. They are making progress. It's just not enough progress."