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

Three Area Schools Get Poor Ratings ; Bloomington, Pontiac Fail to Meet Standards

Posted on: Monday, 19 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

BLOOMINGTON -- Bloomington's high school and junior high school, and Pontiac Junior High School are among Illinois schools that failed to meet the level of progress required by the No Child Left Behind Act in the 2004-05 school year.

But officials in both Bloomington's District 87 and Pontiac's District 429 said the ratings released this week by the Illinois State Board of Education don't reflect schoolwide progress.

The three schools failed because certain subgroups of students did not make enough progress in math proficiency as measured by standardized tests, school officials said.

"The goals of NCLB are good, but realistically it's not going to happen," said Pontiac Superintendent Steve Graham.

Under the law, the three schools must revise school-improvement plans, and get local school board approval of the revisions. The plans will focus on ways to help the students in the groups that didn't meet annual yearly progress standards, said Sally Tucker, assistant superintendent for District 87.

Graham and Tucker argue the way progress is measured is flawed.

Overall, a majority of Illinois students met or exceeded standards outlined by the state and federal governments.

"Illinois on the whole is on the way up. The state on a whole is doing what it needs to be doing," said Becky McCabe, administrator of the board's student-assessment division.

The agency reports small gains in reading and math scores among third-, fifth- and eighth-graders, who take the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. Reading, math and science scores for 11th-graders also were fairly stable on the Prairie State Achievement Exam.

The legislation requires all students to meet or exceed reading and math standards by 2014, and that includes all subgroups. Schools can fail by having only one subgroup fail to meet standards.

Subgroups are any definable population of 45 or more students in a school. They may be defined by a common ethnicity, income levels or special-education needs, for example.

Schools with fewer than 45 students in a subgroup don't have to record the scores of that subgroup.

In Pontiac's case, the subgroup of special-education students did not meet the math standards, Graham said.

Special-education students have individual education plans, but they must take the same subject tests as all students, he said.

He pointed to New Trier, one of the state's wealthiest districts, also not making sufficient progress for the same reason.

"The federal government needs to re-examine how it's dealing with education," he said.

Tucker agreed the way the progress is calculated is flawed.

"The community wants to have good schools -- and having working data, reliable data and being able to compare that at the state and national level is important," she said.

But the way the system of standardized testing is set up doesn't always work out, she said.

"It's a snapshot, based on one day of testing," said Graham.

Graham and Tucker said their districts will present revised school-improvement plans in 2006, but added that they already would have done that regardless of the rating.

Under the federal law, schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress face several penalties.

The lightest penalty being that after two years of bad reviews, school officials must allow students to transfer to better schools.

After six years of failing to meet education goals, schools could be taken over by the state and principals and teachers fired.

---------

Matt Adrian of Lee News Services'capital bureau contributed to thisreport.

Source: Pantagraph

More News in this Category