By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
The Clark County School District released its 2011-2012 School Performance Framework (SPF) rankings on Thursday last week. It was the second year that the district’s school rankings have been released and they showed a general improvement over last year’s results. Ninety-one of the district’s 357 schools achieved the highest grade, a five-star ranking.
Two of those five-star schools are here in the Moapa Valley. Both Moapa Valley High School and Mack Lyon Middle School made the top, five-star spot. It was the second year for the five-star distinction at MVHS, while Mack Lyon Middle School moved up to five stars from a three-star ranking last year.
The two local elementary schools also moved up in their SPF rankings this year. Moapa’s Ute Perkins Elementary received a four-star rating, up from three stars last year. Grant Bowler Elementary in Logandale moved up to a three-star ranking from two stars last year.
Under the new CCSD system, schools receive scores based on academic growth, graduation rate, student engagement, community involvement and other factors. Schools are then placed in one of five categories: five stars for highest performing schools; four stars for exceeding expectations; three stars for schools that are meeting academic standards; two stars for schools close to meeting minimum standards; and one star for low-performing schools.
At a Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) meeting held on Friday morning, local principals said that they were happy with the improved results for their schools.
Mack Lyon Principal Rod Adams proudly wore a red t-shirt to the MVCEAB meeting which proclaimed Lyon as a 5-star school.
“It is a great feeling for our teachers to get the recognition that they have always deserved,” Adams said. “They work their tails off every day.”
Adams said that Mack Lyon had garnered enough points in the new system last year to receive a five-star ranking. But it had been held back to three stars because the school had not made its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) mark, a measure of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
To meet AYP, a school must meet its standards in test results both as an overall student body, but also within various student population subgroups including minority groups, special education students and free and reduced lunch kids.
“It all depended on AYP,” Adams said. “Last year we had similar SPF scores as we do this year. But didn’t make our AYP because we were thrown off by some of the subgroups. This year, we made it through AYP and got the five star ranking.”
Adams attributed part of the excellence of instruction at Mack Lyon to extensive collaboration among teachers of various disciplines on campus.
“Our social studies teachers are working with English teachers to integrate the instruction material,” Adams said. “The math and science departments are working together. So it all comes together for the kids.”
In the end, Adams said he doesn’t lose a lot of sleep over the SPF rubric one way or another.
“Our goal is the same as always,” he said. “It is to get the very best instruction we can out of every classroom and to try to make sure we are in balance with the curriculum.”
MVHS Principal Grant Hanevold also expressed pride in the high school’s second year of 5-star ranking.
“We are grateful to have the recognition for the wonderful things that happen at this school everyday,” Hanevold said.
Hanevold showed statistics that MVHS had an 85% overall graduation rate for 2011-2012. That’s compared to only a 66% graduation rate district-wide.
Proficiency rates had also shown significant improvement for the local high school across the board, Hanevold said.
Ute Perkins Elementary principal Ken Paul, who was not able to be present at the MVCEAB meeting last week, said in a telephone interview that he was pleased with the improvement in the ranking of his school. But he said that he and his staff are still working on becoming familiar with how the new system works and how to push the school to the top ranking.
“We have been re-tooling in trying to focus on growing all the kids academically and not just to work on, what we used to call, the “bubble” kids,” Paul said. “I see it as a good thing in this new model that we succeed as a school when we are moving all of the kids up.”
A large part of SPF draws from data from the Nevada Growth Model which tracks individual student academic growth from year-to-year rather than the strict adherence to an established standard involved with No Child Left Behind. This method of growth measurement shows gains made by schools each year and also provides individual growth data on every student. The Growth Model was developed to replace the No Child Left Behind standards.
“I think it is moving in the right direction,” Paul said of the system. “We get credit not just for making the mark, but also for individual growth of the student toward the standard.”
Paul said that the school’s emphasis is still being placed on ensuring that kids are reading at grade level.
“We are going to great lengths to determine any reading problems and addressing them as early as possible,” he said. “That seems to drive everything else.”
Paul saw another key to the school’s success in its excellent performing arts programs including several choir and dance groups.
“All that engagement in dance and art and music gives kids confidence, self esteem and discipline that they can do what needs to be done and meet the academic challenges,” Paul said. “All of that helps our little school to succeed.”
Bowler Elementary Principal Shawna Jessen saw the school’s improvement to a three-star ranking from last year’s two-star as having far greater significance than it appears on the surface. She pointed out that the school had doubled the number of SPF points it had received from about 30 points last year to 70 this year. This would have been enough points to bring the school a four-star ranking if Bowler had not fallen short on its AYP standings this year.
“We were just short still in a couple of our sub-groups,” Jessen said. “But our numbers have drastically improved and we are excited about the new program.”
Jessen said that she is also still puzzling through the transition from the No Child Left Behind system to the new Growth Model. But she said that the faculty at the school is still working hard on the fundamental principles of solid classroom instruction for the whole student body.
“In the end, it is solid classroom instruction that is going to be the answer to all of these things,” Jessen said. “It is no longer about focusing on a few kids.”
Jessen said that she was especially proud of the five-star rankings of the middle school and high school.
“In this small community, our elementary schools are feeding those schools,” Jessen said. “Those students were ours once. And I think that their success there shows that we are doing things right too at this level.”
