As in 2009, four fail to make adequate yearly progress

Four schools out of 26 in the Tooele County School District did not make adequate yearly progress this year as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That’s the same number of schools that didn’t make AYP last year, however it represents improvement over the course of four years.

In 2009, four district schools did not make AYP, in 2008 eight did not make AYP, and in 2007 a total of nine schools did not make AYP.

East Elementary, Settlement Canyon Elementary, West Elementary, and Tooele Junior High did not meet AYP requirements. Tooele Junior High is the only school in the district that has failed to make AYP two consecutive years.

NCLB measures schools according to three primary criteria: student participation in the testing, language arts and math performance on the Utah CORE tests administered each spring, and the graduation rate for high schools or attendance rate for other schools.

These criteria are broken down for 10 different sub-groups: Asian, African American, American Indian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, economically disadvantaged, limited English proficient, students with disabilities and whole school. If any of the 10 sub-groups do not meet the standards for any of the three criteria then the entire school is reported as not making AYP.

For each sub-group, 95 percent of the students in the group must take the language arts and math CORE tests.

For 2010, the number of students scoring at the proficient level on the CORE tests for language arts must be 83 percent, and for math the standard is 45 percent. The goal for proficiency is raised each year until 2014 when it will be 100 percent.

At East Elementary, which failed to make AYP for the third time since NCLB was initiated in 2003, two sub-groups, “economically disadvantaged” and “students with disabilities,” did not score proficient on the language art test.

“East, as well as all schools, will take a look at how to improve in sub-groups that did not perform well,” said Terry Linares, Tooele County School District superintendent. “Overall we did better in our sub-groups this year. In the past, we have had Hispanic, African, ‘English language learners,’ ‘economically disadvantaged,’ and ‘students with disabilities’ sub-groups all have trouble with AYP. This year we only had two sub-groups that had difficulty with AYP.”

Linares credits the improving AYP results to the district’s emphasis on professional learning communities.

“Teachers working together to collaborate on strategies to reach each student is showing positive results,” Linares said.

At Settlement Canyon Elementary, two sub-groups, “economically disadvantaged” and “students with disabilities,” did not make AYP in language arts due to attendance.

At West Elementary, one sub-group, students with disabilities, did not make language arts due to attendance.

Tooele Junior High, which did not make AYP last year because four sub-groups did not pass in language arts, failed to make AYP this year because one sub-group did not make AYP in language arts due to attendance.

“As a district, we will continue to examine ways to improve our attendance and graduation rates for all sub-groups,” Linares said. “After examining our AYP results, we recognize the need to continue our focus on core standards and objectives in teaching and learning throughout all grade levels.”

A link to state prepared AYP reports for individual schools can be found at the Tooele County School District website www.tooeleschools.org under the public information tab. District-prepared reports for each school will soon be available at the same website, according to Linares.

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com