SPRINGDALE — Nine district schools jumped off the state’s failing schools list under new standards.
Eighteen schools in the Springdale School District landed on the Arkansas Department of Education’s improvement list last year. The list labels schools as failing when the number of students passing standardized tests falls below a rising bar set annually by state standards.
A new measure of standards, released last month, dismisses static scores and instead focuses on closing the achievement gap between the general student population and students who are impoverished, disabled or English language learners.
The new accountability measures coincide with a waiver the U.S. Department of Education gave Arkansas last month to avoid stringent No Child Left Behind standards.
Under No Child Left Behind, the state singled out schools whose number of passing students did not increase annually. Schools failing at least two years in a row landed on the improvement list and were subject to academic and personnel intervention by the state Department of Education.
J.O. Kelly Middle School was in its fifth year on the state’s school improvement list. New standards show J.O. Kelly as an achieving school because of its ability to keep English language learners and low-income students near the academic pace of the general student population.
The school’s low-income students and English language learners outscored the state average on keeping up with the combined student population’s standardized test scores. For example, the math score gap between impoverished students and J.O. Kelly’s combined population is 3 percentage points, 5 points better than the average gap among such students in the state. The smaller gap allowed the middle school to leave the state’s improvement list.
The middle school’s status as achieving under new standards may reflect the school’s diverse population. Student subgroups singled out by the state already receive intensive instruction at the school. Seventy-seven percent of J.O. Kelly students receive free or reduced-price lunch, and 51 percent of students speak a first language other than English.
The middle school has 14 student subgroups, based on income levels and ethnicity. Under the old system, each group had to reach a designated score on Benchmark exams for the school to avoid landing on the state improvement list.
Principal Sara Ford said the new system is a better reflection of how students are performing in the classroom. Under the old system, accountability measures for subgroups of students based on income and ethnicity did not take effect until the subgroup reached at least 40 students. Schools with low numbers of impoverished or minority students could pass standards by leaning on the scores of more affluent students. By requiring schools to close the achievement gap, educators must give more attention to raising scores of struggling students, Ford said.
“Whole groups of kids can be hidden in the data,” Ford said. “We need to know who is and isn’t achieving.”
Lee Elementary School was in danger of falling onto the state’s improvement list. Instead, a virtually nonexistent achievement gap ensures new standards will label the school as achieving. Eighty-seven percent of Lee students receive free or reduced-price lunch.
The school’s economically-disadvantaged students and English language learners fall between 1 and 3 percentage points behind the combined student population in literacy and math.
Lee administrators are pleased to land on the Education Department’s achieving list, but state designations are just a small piece of a larger question educators must ask themselves, said Principal Justin Swope.
“The mindset doesn’t change. Is a school adding value to a child?” Swope said.
District administrators are glad to see more schools with positive labels, but said they are far from celebrating. The new labeling system is not necessarily vindication of the school district’s academic achievements, said Marsha Jones, associate superintendent for curriculum.
The system has a new set of rules schools must follow to avoid state intervention. State education officials have yet to determine what intervention methods they may use, and schools may still be held accountable for individual student subgroups, Jones said.
Educators hope to gain more information on accountability changes in meetings next week in Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock.
Other nearby large school districts saw even more significant decreases in the number of schools designated as failing academic standards. The Fayetteville School District’s number of schools on the improvement list dropped from eight to two, while Bentonville and Rogers school districts have no schools on the new list. Six Bentonville schools were singled out by No Child Left Behind, while Rogers had nine schools on the old school improvement list.
At A Glance
School Lists
The Arkansas Department of Education singled out 18 of Springdale’s 25 schools as failing No Child Left Behind academic standards in 2011. A new system of accountability cuts the number of failing schools in half.
Achieving Schools Leaving The Improvement Or Alert List
- Bayyari Elementary
- Elmdale Elementary
- Lee Elementary
- Shaw Elementary
- Smith Elementary
- Walker Elementary
- Hellstern Middle
- J.O. Kelly Middle
- Southwest Junior High
Schools Still Under School Improvement
- George Elementary
- Monitor Elementary
- Parson Hills Elementary
- Helen Tyson Middle
- George Junior High
- Central Junior High
- Har-Ber High
- Springdale High
- Springdale Alternate Learning Environment
Source: Arkansas Department Of Education