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Bath school fails to meet standards
BY CHARLES GARRATT • STAFF WRITER
 | | Many things have changed in school systems over the years, but one of the things that stay the same is the joy of a sunny day on the playground. Mrs. Dufour's and Mrs. Criser's second grade classes at Valley Elementary School get some exercise under the watchful eye of P.E teacher, Mr. Lindsay. (Recorder photo by Charles Garratt) |
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WARM SPRINGS - The school year started in Bath County Tuesday, but things got off to a difficult start when state test scores were announced.
Valley Elementary School, and the Bath school division as a whole, failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress required by Virginia Department of Education and federal No Child Left Behind regulations, sparking a renewed push among school officials to step up assessments and programs.
Director of personnel and instruction Sue Hirsh told school board members Tuesday the AYP scores do not necessarily mean VES or the division will not be accredited. Accreditation, she said, takes AYP into consideration along with other measures of performance.
In addition, Hirsh said all three county schools, including Valley, performed well above AYP standards as a whole. But since certain subgroups of students fell below the standard, VES and the division failed the standard.
Highland County schools met the AYP standards.
"I am disappointed and concerned," Hirsh said about the scores. "There are a lot of good things happening at Bath County schools. Overall, our kids are achieving."
The figures currently available are considered preliminary, but Hirsh does not expect any changes in the numbers for Bath County before results are made final.
Board member Eddie Ryder, noting benchmark scores for next year will be even higher, asked Hirsh, "What are we doing?"
Hirsh said a couple of programs are already in place to begin this year that should help improve SOL scores across the board. This includes the Read 180 program and offering Title I math.
VES principle Les Balgavy said Wednesday he was "surprised at not making AYP. We didn't see a lot of the issues (revealed in SOL testing) through the school year."
He and VES faculty are implementing more evaluation tools to reveal learning issues earlier in the year, he said. This includes Flanagan Benchmark testing each nine weeks with pre-testing to begin this week. The goal, he said, is to "allow for earlier diagnosis of student weaknesses and allow for the teacher to more quickly address learning issues in his or her classroom."
Retired teacher and school board member Barbara Waldeck said she didn't realize how serious this was. "In 2013-14, every child must pass in every subgroup," she said. "One child can have a bad day and affect the entire school."
Hirsh put a more positive spin on No Child Left Behind regulations, saying one positive aspect of the federal law is that all students are addressed. She pointed out how important correct demographic data is to the final result and how important it is for schools to find the proper tools to evaluate students.
Balgavy said VES faculty are planning to use more Virginia Grade Level Assessments, which will allow those students who have a mastery of grade level subjects but might not test well on standardized tests to demonstrate competency. These results can be used in place of the SOLs, Balgavy said.
Hirsh distributed an eight-page guide to accreditation and AYP prepared by the Virginia Department of Education. The guide explains AYP: "For a school, school division or the commonwealth to make AYP, it must meet or exceed 29 benchmarks for participation in statewide testing, achievement in reading and mathematics, and attendance or science (elementary and middle school) or graduation (high schools). Missing a single benchmark may result in a school or school division not making AYP."
AYP standards are mandated by the No Child Left Behind regulations, and under those, all schools and school divisions accepting any federal education money must have 100 percent of students passing the NCLB standards by school year 2013-14. Each year, the percentage is raised until reaching 100 percent in 2013-14.
This year the standard for English/reading is 73 percent passing and for mathematics is 71 percent passing. For VES, among all students, 81 percent passed English/reading and 78 percent passed math.
The catch comes in subgroups of "students with disabilities" and "students identified as disadvantaged." The disadvantaged group, said Hirsh, consists of students receiving free or reduced lunches, which is a measure of being economically disadvantaged. About 28 percent of students fall into that category in Bath County, said Hirsh.
In the subgroup of students with disabilities at VES, only 28 percent passed English/reading and only 39 percent passed math.
The economically disadvantaged group came closer to the benchmark with 68 percent passing English/reading and 65 percent passing math.
VES scores for this year in these subgroups did not meet standards, nor did the three-year average.
For the division as a whole, the calculations are more complex, Hirsh said. At some of the county schools, the group is too small to be counted in AYP calculations. "In some cases, there is one student in the group," Hirsh said.
Even though the few students in a group at a particular school may perform below standards, if the group is too small, the scores for that group don't impact AYP for that school. But when added together in the division, the numbers may be high enough for the group to be counted.
That's what happened with the division-wide scores, said Hirsh. For the division, both the disabled and disadvantaged groups failed to meet standards. At the division level, 47 percent of students with disabilities passed English/reading and 44 percent passed math. In the economically disadvantaged group, 69 percent passed English/ reading and math.
None of Bath's schools have been placed in the "improvement" classification by the state, however. This can happen if a school or division fails to meet AYP standards two years in a row. It then takes two years in a row meeting those standards to get the "improvement" label removed.
Schools identified as being in "improvement" must notify parents of their status before the beginning of the school year and offer students the opportunity to transfer to a school - within the division - that is not identified for improvement, according to VDOE.
Schools in one-year improvement must develop and implement a two-year improvement plan. This could happen if VES or the Bath division fails to meet AYP in the same subject area next year.
There are other parts of AYP and NCLB such as "safe harbor" and the calculations to determine AYP, Hirsh said. Some larger systems, she said, have staff who can study all the rules and do calculations internally.
Hirsh said she doesn't have time and relies on state reports. Until this year, Bath schools have met AYP standards and she hasn't had to deal with any of the possible remedial choices.
Accreditation will be the next big hurdle. Bath schools and school division as a whole can make accreditation, Hirsh told the board.
The accreditation takes into account AYP standards along with other factors, she said, but like AYP, accreditation is a complicated formula not easily explained.
AYP test results and standings can be obtained on the Web for all schools and school divisions at https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/ reportcard/.
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