By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Grant Bowler Elementary School principal Shauna Jessen has recently been spending long hours sifting through mountains of data and trying to process how her school might finally turn the tide on its academic accountability ratings.
For the past three years, the school has come up short in the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures required by the national No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. Last week; when the Clark County School District (CCSD) released its School Performance Framework, a new school ranking model intended to replace NCLB; Bowler was ranked as only a 2-star school out of a possible five stars.
The puzzle for Jessen is in the fact that, despite all these lackluster performance ratings, Bowler students have consistently performed high on standardized test scores compared to their district and state peers. The district has encouraged schools to strive for a 70% proficiency on the state’s standardized test. Bowler has consistently scored at 65% or higher.
“We’ve been puzzling for some time over, with such a high proficiency level, why we are not higher rated,” Jessen said. “In this case, we are not showing enough growth in comparison to our peer groups.”
The School Performance Framework (SPF), unveiled last week by the CCSD, is meant to replace the old NCLB requirements with a more robust and multi-faceted approach.
NCLB passed or failed schools solely on whether students tested at grade level. It also divides the school’s student body up into sub-groups including minorities, free/reduced lunch, special education students and English language learner groups. If any one of these sub-groups fell below the standard, the school wouldn’t make the AYP grade.
For Bowler, these sub-groups often have become a sticking point. In a small school like Bowler, a sub-group often amounts to just a handful of students that can affect the entire score for the school.
“If one or two of those specific kids are not feeling well (on the day of the test); maybe they had trouble at home that morning, or they are just having a bad day; that can directly affect the school’s rating,” Jessen said.
Under SPF, achievement still accounts for 88% of the school’s rating. But, unlike NCLB, it is not just looking at test scores against a straight standard. Instead it measures whether students are growing from one grade level to another. A school can earn half of its academic points, even when students miss the standard on the test, if those students show their skills are increasing to catch up with their peers district-wide.
The other 12% of the SPF score is based on the “Climate measure” of the school. This includes elements like student attendance, participation in student surveys about the school and parental involvement. This is an area where Bowler always shines, Jessen said.
“I am very proud of our climate score,” Jessen said. “It wasn’t a surprise that we came out very high there. And that is reflective of our good community and the traditionally high parent involvement in the school.”
Mack Lyon Middle School principal, Rod Adams sees the SPF as generally an improvement over the old NCLB model.
“I think that it is great for the kids,” Adams said. “But for the school in general, I’ll be interested to see how it will all play out.”
Lyon was given a three star ranking along with 34 other middle schools in the district. Not a single middle school in the district received a 5 star ranking and only 7 middle schools achieved 4 stars.
Adams stated that a 3-star ranking is the highest that a school can achieve when it does not meet AYP requirements.
Lyon fell short last year on AYP for the first time. Even so, the school’s test scores were high: in the 65-70% proficiency range. But, like Bowler, Lyon was hurt by low performance in its statistically small sub-groups, Adams said.
Adams expressed concern that, under the new system, schools with traditionally high test scores might get stuck hitting the ceiling on the growth requirement.
“Of course, our goal is 100% proficiency,” Adams said. “But when you run at 82% in Math, like we did, it is tough to show dramatic growth from there. Especially in a small school of only 200-300 kids. You’re always going to have kids that throw the test and answer A on every question. Those little things can have a big impact to a small school.”
Even so, Adams is optimistic about the new system; especially about the ability it gives to track the performance of individual students.
“That’s really the great part about all of this,” Adams said. “We have the capability to look at individual student data and use that to make better judgements on where to place them and what resources we can use to help each one.”
Ute Perkins Elementary school in Moapa also received a 3-star ranking last week, despite also achieving relatively high test scores last year.
In the previous 2009-2010 school year, Perkins enjoyed a stellar year on its test scores. That year, the school achieved a High Achieving NCLB status.
But last year (2010-2011), the school’s test scores saw a small dip in the trend. The school still made AYP last year. But Perkins principal Ken Paul thinks this is most likely what hurt the school in its SPF growth rankings.
“One of the difficulties in the growth model is that, if your achievement is high already, it is harder to show growth,” Paul said. “The question will be: Once you achieve a five-star ranking how do you stay there?”
Nevertheless, Paul said that he likes the new system because it is based on more than just flat achievement on test scores against a standard.
“Overall, I wish we had ended up a little higher,” Paul said. “Yes you could argue that, as a small school, we had some statistical challenges. But I tell my staff that, whether you agree with the accuracy of the data or not, this gives us the opportunity to have a conversation about how we can improve things for each student.”
Paul said it will take some time to digest the new system and figure out what needs to be done to raise the school’s ranking.
“Our growth score was pretty low this year,” Paul said. “But exactly what caused that might be less clear. Is it teachers in the classroom? Is it instruction techniques? Is it curriculum? It is hard to come to an answer until we have had some time to study everything out.”
The new SPF system is undergoing a two year try-out period to allow school and district administrators to digest its complexities, bring feedback to the district, and come up with school improvement plans before actually becoming accountable for the results.
Schools that achieve a 5-star ranking are rewarded with an autonomous status: greater flexibility in setting school curriculum, spending budgets and running day-to-day operations. Lower performing schools will be given greater support and resources needed to improve.
“If schools don’t get better, that’s not an option,” said CCSD Superintendent Dwight Jones last week at a press conference. “They have to get better.”
Back at Bowler Elementary, Jessen sees her school’s 2-star ranking as an opportunity to improve. The school’s 2-star rating along with its three year NCLB watch status is expected to draw additional resources to the school for improvement.
“In the past we have had success with these great tutoring programs,” Jessen said. “But they were not sustainable because of funding. So they sort of came in and went out dependent on when we had funding. Now we’ll have a systemic plan and we are told that we will have the resources available to carry it out.”
Additional resources may even bring assistance with staffing at the school. In recent years, district-wide budget cuts have caused the school to lose key positions like its Literacy Specialist and its full-time Assistant Principal position. Positions like this had been vital in providing help to struggling kids, Jessen said. The district is now talking about providing assistance in bringing positions like that back to the school, Jessen said.
“I think that in the long run this will be a very good thing,” Jessen said. “I’m optimistic that when we spend some time, learn how to track all these things and focus the resources on what is needed, that it will make a positive difference in the results at the school.”
