By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Local school administrators and teachers took a significant blow to morale last week. On Friday, the Nevada School Performance Framework (NSPF) rankings were released for the 2017-18 school year. Local schools, which usually have fared well in the framework, suddenly came in with surprisingly low rankings.
This statewide system ranks schools as performing between 1 and 5 star levels. The rankings are based on test scores and a myriad of other factors.
Lyon Middle School dropped from a stellar 5-star ranking to 3-stars. Perkins Elementary dropped from a 4-star school to a 2-star status. Moapa Valley High School was dropped down a notch from 5-stars to a 4-star rating. The only upgraded school was Grant Bowler Elementary, which went from its 2-star rating the year before, to a 3-star spot.
Local principals expressed frustration at this year’s rankings saying that the measures for this year had become increasingly complicated and unclear; and that isolated and esoteric statistical factors had ecclipsed the ongoing reality of high performance at the schools.
Perhaps most affected by last week’s announcement was the staff at Mack Lyon Middle School. The Overton school has had a track record of achieving 5-star rankings for more than five years running.
Lyon principal Ken Paul emphasized that the downgrade in ranking was not due to any significant drop in general test scores at the school. In fact, the school’s overall performance index score was rated very high at an 87, significantly higher than the 80 it received last year as a 5-star school. That score even beat many of this year’s 5-star schools, Paul said.
But the rating system added a new element this year which proved disastrous to Lyon’s star rating, Paul said.
The ranking system has long tracked the scores of each “subgroup” population at the schools. These include groups like special education students, various ethnic and racial groups, English Language Learners (ELA), economically disadvantaged students and more.
This year a change was made that if any one of these subgroups failed to reach a pre-set proficiency target on test scores, the school could not receive a score higher than 3 stars, regardless of the rest of the school’s performance, Paul said.
In Lyon’s case, the school’s special education subgroup had fallen short of the target set, Paul explained. For example, the target was set at 14.3 percent proficiency in Math. The school’s subgroup only achieved 5.1 percent which was perfectly in line with its scores the previous year. The district average in this subgroup category was 4 percent. But because of the new criterion, the school was dropped to 3 stars.
Paul said that sufficient improvement in that category was a near impossibility given the small size of the subgroup in the rural school. In a school of a little over 400 kids, the special education subgroup only amounts to 27 students, Paul explained.
That means that the statistical shortfall in Math scores came down to the performance of only about two struggling special education students.
Paul said that last week’s news had come as a shock to him as the school’s test scores had been strong in the general population and in the subgroups. He said that the news had taken a real emotional toll on his teachers as well.
“There was quite a bit of anger and frustration going around,” Paul said. “Our teachers, who work so hard, were concerned that parents and the public would assume that everyone had just suddenly tanked in their test scores and that is simply not true. We are still strong and the students have performed very well on their tests. It is just that very small subgroup where we didn’t show enough growth.”
Paul added that he had taken special pains to allay the potential concerns of his Special Education team at the school. “I went to them first to make sure that they understood that they were not letting everyone down,” Paul said. “It is not as simple as that. They do a great job and I didn’t want that perception out there at all.”
Moapa Valley High School also fell victim to a similar statistical anomoly caused by a subgroup in its ranking. MVHS Principal Hal Mortensen explained that this subgroup was an ever-dwindling ELL group at the school. This segment is required to take a test gauging students’ proficiency in communicating in English. The growth in those test results are factored into the school’s ranking.
“The list of those students keeps getting smaller and smaller because our kids are passing the test and moving on,” Mortensen said.
Currently the sub group is down to only about 12 kids at the school, Mortensen said. And some of those have other challenges or disabilities. Some are also part of the special education subgroup, he said.
“We work hard on them, but some of them just haven’t been able to pass it,” Mortensen said.
That one factor had a major effect on the school’s downgrade to 4 star rating, he added.
In addition, several new measures were added to the ranking system that were unexpected by administrators. These included scores in Math and English achieved by last year’s junior class on the ACT. Also included was results from a standardized science test.
“Last year they told us that these tests would only be for participation and not factored into the star rankings,” Mortensen said. “So we didn’t do any special test preparation with the kids. Then right before school started, they said, ‘Oh, by the way, those scores will count.’ So our kids were unprepared and did fairly poorly on those exams.”
But even with these measures working against it, the performance at MVHS has remained comparatively high. The school still maintains one of the highest graduation rates of any comprehensive high school in the state.
“The fact that our teachers and staff are working hard doing our jobs, and that we have a graduation rate consistently in the 98 percent range doesn’t seem to matter at all in these measures,” Mortensen said. “That is what is frustrating.”
A small population was, once again, a determining factor in the downgrade of rating at Ute Perkins Elementary in Moapa. Mortensen, who also acts as principal at Perkins, said that the school only has one class per grade in grades 3-5. And those classes are relatively small at only 20-25 kids in each classroom.
“It was not because our test scores tanked, but more because we apparently didn’t show enough improvement in the scores which had been high to begin with,” Mortensen said.
Mortensen acknowledged that being ranked as a 2-star school may carry a benefit of receiving additional funding to improve. But that funding may be a long time coming. With this year’s budgets locked in, the additional funding may not come until next year.
“If there is all this improvement needed all of a sudden, from last year to this year, it would seem evident that I need the funding now, not next year,” Mortensen said. “That is the irony of it.”
Mortensen explained that Perkins had hired three aides last year to assist teachers in working with remedial-level kids and bringing them up to grade level. These are the kids who specifically should be targeted to improve the school’s ranking, Mortensen said. But this year, the school has been forced to cut those positions because of funding reductions at the school.
“The fact is that we have been doing a lot of good things at these schools and we will continue to do so,” Mortensen said. “But now we have learned that we need to teach more to the test and take time on test-taking skills to ensure that the kids are ready.”
Grant Bowler Elementary school was pleased to see an upgrade to its star ranking. The school took its ranking hit last year when it dropped down to 2 stars.
“We took a lot of criticism in the community last year because of that,” said Bowler principal Shawna Jessen. “But it was another example of a purely statistical challenge. When you don’t have the numbers in your subgroups, things can swing pretty hard in one direction or another. That can end up being pretty punitive. We saw that last year.”
With last week’s news, Jessen said that she is pleased to regain a more solid ranking. “We are on a positive trajectory and we are happy about that,” she said. “With our new focus this year on conceptual learning and problem solving skills we believe that we will see benefits across the spectrum with our kids.”
