LTUSD test scores

unedited oct. mt. news article:

LTUSD slipping in test scores

By Kathryn Reed

“We are under huge pressure because it’s going the wrong way.”
Superintendent Jim Tarwater is worried about standardized test scores at Bijou.
Bijou and South Tahoe Middle School are in year four of being program improvement schools. Lake Tahoe Unified School District schools are among 2,709 in the nation under the “restructuring” category.
Even though the middle school improved its test scores from 2006 to 2007 by 29 points, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the No Child Left Behind requirements. Bijou dropped by 24 points.
The district per the federal NCLB had the choice to: reopen the schools as a charter; replace all or most staff including the principals; contract with an outside entity to manage the schools; have the state take over the schools; or any other major restructuring. The latter was chosen for both schools.
At Bijou, grade level teams have been established. The middle school is structured by departments. Professional development is a key factor.
“What we’ve done to help the teachers is we’ve purchased online student reporting systems (OARS),” Tarwater said. “Teachers are creating more frequent assessments of students and then you say ‘what are you going to do about it?’”
Data is shared, students given extra help and sent to support classes. OARS will show what areas of instruction are or aren’t being grasped by the students and which students get it and which don’t.
This will achieve the goal of monitoring kids more often, seeing what intervention programs work and changing the ones that don’t. OARS is at every school. High school performance is checked every 4.5 weeks, at the other levels it’s every six weeks.
“The one good thing with No Child Left Behind is drilling down and looking at each child,” Tarwater said. “It’s looking at results of how they are taught. When you restructure, teachers are stakeholders in how kids perform.”
Parents In Education has been instituted at Bijou to provide outreach to adults. Literacy coaches are onboard.
After school programs are available for students needing help beyond the classroom.
With all-day kindergarten in its second year in LTUSD, this should help better prepare kids. Preppie K is also said to be working well.
At the middle school starting this month students get out at 12:55 p.m. instead of 1:55 p.m. on Wednesdays so teachers can collaborate about student achievement and talk about curriculum pacing.
Tarwater is on the leadership team at both troubled schools. He said he isn’t ready to make a change in who is principal at the respective schools, but he did say this year and next are critical.
“It’s not all the principal, but it is a big weight is on the principal,” the superintendent said.
He said part of the problem is past superintendents did not take the situation as seriously as they should have so corrective measures didn’t begin until he came on board. This is his third school year at the helm of the academically challenged district. Tarwater puts blame on administrators, not the school board for the current state of affairs.
To compound the woes in the district, Tahoe Valley and Sierra House elementary schools and South Tahoe High did not meet the goals of NCLB in the latest round of testing.
Each spring students are tested, with results coming near the start of the next school year. The federal government set up a system where schools must meet an adequate yearly progress. It lumps English learners, high achievers and special education students into one group. No special considerations are given.
Each year a larger percentage of the student population must be in the proficient category for a school to meet the federal mandate. Math, language arts, science and social science are on the standardized tests.
Tarwater admits socio-economics plays a role in testing achievement. For example, Sierra House is 65 percent Latino. Its numbers dropped by 9 points. Tahoe Valley increased by 3, the high school declined by 1.
The magnet school is the only site to hit the mark. It is predominately white, with a higher income level where both parents often don’t need to work.
State Superintendent of Schools Jack O’Connell said, “(California) has a challenging student population. We have an achievement gap.”
He said this why California lags behind other states on standardized test performance.
O’Connell was at MontBleu on Oct. 3 speaking at the 86th annual California Association of Highway Patrolmen’s Traffic Safety Conference.
He said challenges in the classroom are widespread across the state – throwing out statistics like students speak 100 languages, 41 percent of kids speak a language other than English at home, and that 25 percent of the K-12 population are English learners.
The makeup of students in California, according to O’Connell, is 48 percent Latino, 31 percent white, 8 percent black and 8 percent Asian.
A big fault many find with NCLB is that instead of monitoring the class of 2008 from elementary on up to see its improvement, the tests compare today’s third-graders to last year’s – so it’s not the same kids.
The OARS system the district implemented allows for that longitudinal type of monitoring – to see how a student and class develops over the years.
Congress is looking at changing how data is analyzed to make it more relevant, but Tarwater’s not betting it will pass.