NCLB Status

As I'm sure we all know, school that fail to make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) can be subject to sanctions.

Here is a table of School Improvement Status levels and the applicable sanctions from the OSPI web site:

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School Improvement Status

Year 1 First year of not making AYP (alert status).

Year 2/Step 1 Second consecutive year the school did not make AYP; enters Step 1 which requires the development of a school improvement plan and the option for students to attend another school (“public school choice”) within the district that is not in school improvement.

Step 2 Did not make AYP after being in Step 1. In addition to the public school choice requirement, supplemental services must also be offered.

Step 3 Did not make AYP after being in Step 2. In addition to offering public school choice and supplemental services, the school must take corrective action.

Step 4 Did not make AYP after being in Step 3. In addition to offering public school choice and supplemental services and taking corrective action, the school must plan for alternative governance.

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The District, as a whole, is in Step 2 for Districts.

As a District, we failed to make AYP in these categories for the 2005-2006 school year:

4th grade, Special Education, reading
4th grade, Black students, math
4th grade, Special Education, reading
4th grade, Low Income students, math
7th grade, Black students, reading
7th grade, Low Income students, reading
7th grade, Black students, math
7th grade, Low Income students, math
10th grade, Low Income students, reading
10th grade, Low Income students, math
10th grade, graduation rate

You might be asking yourself, are there any Seattle Public Schools with Step 3 or Step 4 School Improvement Status?

As of last year, there were no schools at Step 4. The results for the 2006-2007 school year will soon be available, and then we will know if any of these schools, now at Step 3, will be moved to Step 4 upon the release of the scores:

African American Academy K-8
Aki Kurose Middle School
Franklin High School
Ingraham High School
Madison Middle School
Mercer Middle School
Rainier Beach High School

Step 4 looks pretty dire to me. Why isn't anyone talking about this?

Comments

Anonymous said…
One thing to keep in mind is that schools that do not accept the federal funding that is related to this do not get held to these reviews. I am pretty sure that Meany Middle School is an example of a school that would be on the list otherwise (please correct me if I'm mistaken).
Jet City mom said…
As far as I know- only schools with 1-8th grades receive Title One money.
If they don't recieve the money- which is the main corrective action by the state- I believe- what can the state do?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/
238306_wasl27.html

from what I have read- students can choose to attend another school- but that would depend on slots and I don't know if transportation would be included.
Anonymous said…
I think it's interesting that there has been so much arguing and speculation back about forth about why families aren't choosing Ingraham. Why QA families aren't satisfied with it being the only school they can predictably get into. Here is a quote from Charlie, posted on an earlier threat "I'm not entirely sure what beef people have with Ingraham except that some of them feel an attachment to Ballard while others complain mostly about Ingraham's location."

I don't think the answer could be more clear. It is at step 3!! That's pretty serious folks. It has had a culture of under achievement and has had very low test scores for years.

I give Ingraham and the district alot of credit for adding the IB program, and I think Ingraham has a lot of potential. But it has a long way to go before it is competetive with schools like Ballard, Roosevelt or Garfield.

Why would someone in Queen Anne want to ship their kid an hour and a half by Metro across town to a less than adequate, step 3 school?



I wouldn't have my kid there.
Anonymous said…
Why aren't people talking about this???

I think families just tend to avoid these schools, as they are all severely under enrolled.

Most of the schools are in lower income neighborhoods, where the communities tend to tolerate a lot more. Or ship their kids up north to a better school. Guess they won't be shipping their kids up to Ingraham anymore.
Charlie Mas said…
Anne asked about Meany.
Meany is at step 2.

Here is a list of each Seattle school, whether they met AYP in the past four years, their Improvement Step Status for the past 4 years, and whether they get Title I funding or not.
Roy Smith said…
For what its worth:

One of the fun things about NCLB is that a school fails AYP overall if even one subcategory of students fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress. See this table for information about what schools failed in what areas last year.

In Ingraham's case, the only sub-group that didn't achieve AYP was low income students, and only on the Math section. They are now at step 3.

Compare this to Cleveland which did not meet AYP in four areas (including the AYP for All Students in Math, and not meeting the graduation rate criteria) is at step 2, which means, according to NCLB, Cleveland is doing better than Ingraham.
Anonymous said…
No, Roy, it does not mean Cleveland is a better school than Ingraham. Schools are only evaluated annually, and only move one step per year. It could mean that this is the 2nd year that Cleveland has not met AYP. Cleveland could move to step 3 this year. Ingraham could move to step 4, or it could bump back to a step 2.

In any case, Ingraham has a much higher population of low income students than their neighbor HS's Ballard, Roosevelt and Hale, due to their working class neighborhood and substantial south end draw. So, my guess is a good number of kids are not meeting AYP.

Reason how you will, you will never find Eckstein, Roosevelt, Ballard or Garfield on that list. Never.

So again, why would a family want Ingraham???? And why would a QA family want to ship their kid two buses and an hour and a half away to another neighborhood, for a school that is in step 3???
Roy Smith said…
Reason how you will, you will never find Eckstein, Roosevelt, Ballard or Garfield on that list.

Really? Every last one of the four schools you mention has failed to make AYP at least once in the past four years, and Ballard and Garfield failed to make AYP three years in a row (and are consequently still at Step 2). Ballard failed to make AYP for 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05, and has been in Step 2 for the past 2 years. Same for exact trend for Garfield. Roosevelt failed to make AYP for 2002-03 and 2003-04, and was in Step 1 for a year. Eckstein failed to make AYP in 2002-03.
Charlie Mas said…
I don't think that making or not making AYP is a very good measure of school quality.

I think the critical part of roy's statement was the qualifier "according to NCLB". I thought it was intended as a reflection on NCLB rather than either of the schools.
Roy Smith said…
charlie mas said . . . I think the critical part of roy's statement was the qualifier "according to NCLB". I thought it was intended as a reflection on NCLB rather than either of the schools.

Correct. I think that there are useful ways to evaluate schools and compare them qualitatively, some of which do include looking at test scores (but not to the exclusion of all else). IMHO, NCLB is not one of them.

I don't think it is really worth sidetracking this thread into a debate over whether NCLB is worthwhile or not. It isn't going away anytime soon, so we have to deal with the fallout that it is going to cause.

However, in the original post, Charlie makes a really good point: this fall, we may have schools in SPS that will be in Step 4. This step mandates planning for alternative governance; i.e., the district must replace the administration at schools that are in Step 4. Like most everything else with NCLB, this is not optional. It is worth discussing how SPS might deal with this situation, and to discover if anybody at the district level has been thinking about the subject.
Anonymous said…
Last year there were about 8 students that transferred from a few of the central area cluster elementary schools to Montlake, McGilva and Stevens because of this. I'm not sure which schools they came from, I think it was Madrona and TT Minor. I know a couple came to Stevens because there was a lot of news about it increasing the class size.
Jet City mom said…
Last year there was step 5- is that not an option anymore?

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