• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Half of City Schools Fall Short ; Reading, Math Scores Fail to Meet Expectations

Posted on: Thursday, 4 August 2005, 12:00 CDT

Half of the public schools in Springfield did not meet state and federal expectations in reading and math, based on the scores of state tests taken last spring during the 2004-05 school year.

The schools that didn't achieve their goals were: Addams, Lee, Matheny, McClernand, Ridgely, Wanless, Enos, Feitshans and Harvard Park elementary schools; Grant, Franklin, Jefferson and Washington middle schools; and Lanphier, Springfield and Southeast high schools.

District 186 schools that made the cut were: Black Hawk, Butler, Dubois, Graham, Fairview, Hazel Dell, Iles, Laketown, Lindsay, Owen Marsh, Pleasant Hill, Sandburg, Southern View, Ball Charter and Wilcox elementary schools; and Lincoln Magnet middle school.

The tests were given in the third, fifth, eighth and 11th grades, with the scores determining whether the schools made "Adequate Yearly Progress," or AYP, as defined by grade-level benchmarks set by the state in accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

A school makes AYP based on the average of its reading and math scores, as well as scores broken down into racial, economic and special-needs subgroups. Other factors include attendance and graduation rates, and percentage of students tested. The longer a school fails to meet AYP, the more severe its state and federal sanctions can be.

Two Springfield schools, Feitshans and Harvard Park, fell short of meeting their goals for a fifth consecutive year, which means they have to plan for a complete overhaul, to be implemented during the 2006-07 term if their scores don't improve enough during the 2005-06 school year.

Last year was a good test for the federal law's impact on schools in Illinois. States set their own increments leading up to the No Child Left Behind's expectation that schools reach 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

In 2004-05, the Illinois State Board of Education made its first move up the scale, increasing an initial demand that 40 percent of students at a school test at grade-level to 47.5 percent.

While the higher expectations made little difference at some Springfield schools that continue to struggle meeting the original bar, it kept other District 186 schools on the state's warning list after almost having climbed off it. At least two, McClernand and Wanless, are back in AYP trouble after gains in scores got them off the state's warning list last year.

Enos Elementary School barely exceeded reading standards in 2003- 04, when 40 percent of its students were expected to be proficient and 41 percent tested as such. But the math scores of its low- income students, of whom only 33 percent tested at grade-level, kept the school from achieving AYP.

The 2004-05 state tests revealed that proficiency among Enos' low- income students increased, from 33 percent to 47.8 percent. But its average reading score, while also improving, fell just one-tenth of a percentage point short of the new 47.5 minimum.

While many schools followed a similar pattern of incremental, back-and-forth progress, with a burst of improvement here or there, the district continues to show severely low levels of performance in some areas, particularly among black and low-income students.

At Southeast High School, only 11.2 percent of its black 11th- graders tested at grade-level in math. And there was no significant change in the wide achievement gap between District 186's white and black students.

"When you're hoping to see large jumps annually, and when you (don't see) that, you might be tempted to throw up your hands. But we absolutely cannot do that," said School Superintendent Diane Rutledge. "The message we've been giving to the staff is just that: staying the course and implementing the kinds of things we know that work."

Rutledge added that the state tests only show how well a student performs on a particular day of school and should not necessarily be seen as the determining factor for judging whether a school or student is successful.

"This is certainly one indicator, but it is not the only indicator," she said.

Source: State Journal Register

More News in this Category