Schools meet AYP standard
Whitefish schools are meeting federal
standards for a quality education.
Muldown Elementary, the middle school
and high school all met Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child
Left Behind act. Schools are required to meet benchmarks to meet
AYP, which is calculated based in-part on testing.
“Overall our scores are outstanding,”
Special Services Director Dave Means said. “We always want our kids
to improve and we’re excited that the results show they are.”
Means gave a presentation on the
district’s AYP status to the School Board Sept. 13.
At Muldown, 94 percent of students were
proficient in reading and 82 percent were proficient in math. At
the middle school, 94 percent are proficient in reading and 80
percent in math.
While each school met the standard, the
whole elementary district, kindergarten through eighth grade, did
not. Students in the elementary district were 94 percent proficient
in reading and 80 percent proficient in math.
The reason they failed to meet AYP
comes down to the number of students in the disability and economic
disadvantage subgroups, according to Means.
Students in the disabled and
economically subgroups in the elementary district did not make
adequate yearly progress therefore disqualifying the elementary
district. In both subgroups the district could have met AYP
standards had one or two students scored higher.
“There is so few students in the
subgroup, one or two students makes the difference (between making
AYP and not),” he said.
The elementary district is showing
progress with those students, however, because the number of
non-proficient students decreased over the last testing.
“We are increasing the skills of these
students,” Means said.
Because the elementary district did not
make AYP, a few areas will receive greater attention to improve
scores. Those include after school tutoring, professional
development and mentoring programs for new teachers.
“We take this very seriously,” Means
said. “We have high expectations for all students.”
At the high school, 98 percent of
students are proficient in reading and 72 percent are proficient in
math.
One benchmark the high school did not
make was it’s graduation rate.
Whitefish’s graduation rate was 79
percent, while NCLB sets a target rate of 85 percent.
Under NCLB, graduation is tracked over
a four-year period of attendance.
“We have many students that move,”
Means said. “If we don’t know where they are then we have to report
them as dropped out. We do our best to try to track those students
down.”
Three-fourths of Montana’s schools met
progress goals under NCLB this year. Eighty-five percent of Montana
students tested proficient in reading and 69 percent for math.