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Different Score Mixes Affect Rankings -- Fewer High-Scoring Students Can Cut School's Overall Level

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 09:01 CDT

In today's world of student testing, youngsters at a school can make adequate or even significant progress from one year to the next while the school's accountability ranking drops a little, DeSoto County Schools officials say.

Take Hernando Middle School, for example.

According to state tests administered in the spring of 2004, students failed to make "adequate yearly progress" in both reading and mathematics.

However, the high percentages of students scoring at proficient and advanced levels (ranging from 91 percent in grade 6 to 70 percent in grade 8) provided the school with a level 5, or superior- performing ranking.

The recently reported spring 2005 test results showed Hernando Middle students making adequate yearly progress in all areas. However, the school's accountability ranking had slipped to level 4 (exemplary).

Although more students were progressing adequately, the percentage of students at the proficient and advanced levels in the sixth and eighth grades had dropped some.

In the sixth grade, 80 percent scored at the higher proficiency levels compared with 91 percent the previous year. The eighth grade percentages were 70 percent in 2004 and 65 percent in 2005.

However, the percentages at the higher levels in the seventh grade went up from the previous year - from 75 to 78 percent.

All schools have a new set of students in at least one grade every year as most students move up a grade. Thus virtually all sixth-graders at Hernando Middle last year were not at the school the previous year.

It is considered likely that last year's sixth-graders brought with them different skill levels than the previous year's sixth- graders had.

At the same time, the approach taken to testing special education students in the past year and the designation of adequate progress of students as the top priority in the district apparently affected the overall test results.

The previous year, three schools - Oak Grove Central Elementary, Hernando Elementary and and Horn Lake Intermediate - were placed in the school improvement process because of failure of some students to make adequate progress.

That came despite the fact that based on achievement levels, Horn Lake Intermediate was classified as exemplary and the other schools were successful and none were classified as underperforming.

"We wanted to make sure that we did what we needed to get those schools out of the (school improvement) process and we also wanted to make sure that other schools did not end up there," Jennifer Weeks, the school district's interim testing coordinator, said Friday.

"The goal is to meet adequate yearly progress. We have got to meet those federal mandates."

The mandate is included in the No Child Left Behind Act.

The progress goal was accomplished for the year in spite of the fact that the district involved special education students in a higher level of testing than in past years.

Weeks and Dr. Edith Robinson, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said the inclusion of special education students in regular grade level testing was a step forward for the district in steadily advancing toward a 2014 federal deadline for all students to be performing at proficiency level or higher.

Weeks said the district also will continue to work toward bringing all schools to level 5.

The 2005 results show 15 schools at level 5, six at level 4 and two at level 3 (successful).

Two elementary schools - Hernando and Olive Branch - do not have grade 3 or above and are not assigned a classification level.

The district, Weeks said, will use the test data as it moves to improve student performance in all schools.

"We will be taking the data and finding out specifically where the problem is," Weeks said. "Is the problem with third-grade math? Or is it with special education or ELL (English language learners)?

"We will then specifically target that area to make that improvement, which will in turn pull up an entire school."

- Jimmie Covington: (901) 333-2010

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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