Schools fail to meet all NCLB requirements.
By: Lea Kahn
Lawrence High School and Lawrence Middle School have been designated as "schools in need of improvement" because they failed to meet all 40 requirements set out under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation for the second year in a row.
The two schools have not made "adequate yearly progress," based on a year-to-year comparison of their scores in the High School Proficiency Assessment and the Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment from 2003 to 2004.
Sanctions, however, will not be applied against the two schools because they do not receive federal Title I funds. That money is allocated to a school, based on the number of students who receive a free or reduced-price lunch.
The fact that LHS and LMS do not face sanctions "doesn’t mean we sit back and wait for next year’s reports," said LHS Principal Donald Proffit, who also doubles as the district’s interim assistant superintendent for curriculum.
Instead, school district officials plan to analyze the test results in an effort to find out what concepts the students do not understand and then help them to master those ideas, Mr. Proffit said.
LHS met 39 of 40 criteria for the 2003-04 school year, compared to 37 of 40 criteria in 2002-03. LMS met 37 of 40 criteria for 2003-04, as compared to 39 of 40 in 2002-03, according to the state Department of Education.
At LHS, students with learning disabilities did not meet the standards for language arts literacy and mathematics on the HSPA in 2003, the DOE said. That group of students showed improved results on the language arts literacy portion of the 2004 test, but no improvement in the mathematics segment.
Economically disadvantaged students did not meet the mathematics standards on the HSPA in 2003. Test results were not reported for economically disadvantaged students in the language arts literacy and mathematics portions of the HSPA for 2004 because there were fewer than 20 students in that subgroup.
At LMS, students with learning disabilities did not meet the standards for the language arts literacy or mathematics portions of the GEPA in 2003 and 2004.
Economically disadvantaged students met the standards for language arts literacy portion in 2003, but not in 2004. They did not meet the standards for the math portion in 2003, but they did meet the standards in 2004.
To get out of the cycle of not making adequate yearly progress or being designated as a school in need of improvement, perfect test scores are needed in each subgroup that is being tested, said Schools Superintendent Max Riley.
The subgroups include students with learning disabilities, limited English proficient students, whites, blacks, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Native Indian, Hispanic and the economically disadvantaged.
Dr. Riley said that while the district is not facing legal or economic sanctions because LMS and LHS did not make adequate yearly progress, it is nevertheless a "moral" issue because the schools are not preparing the students for life in the 21st century.
"As a society and as a profession, we have gone through a huge change in the belief structure," Dr. Riley said. Students with learning disabilities and economically disadvantaged students were not expected to learn at similar levels, but NCLB says all children will learn, he said.
The school district must adapt its resource allocation and instruction to assure all children learn, Dr. Riley said. It must do a more effective job in teaching students with learning disabilities and economically disadvantaged students to ensure they can meet the federal standards, he said.
Dr. Riley outlined three strategies to achieve that goal, starting with investing in professional development for teachers. They must learn and practice new and varied strategies to reach the diverse student population that they find in their classrooms, he said.
The second prong is to reach students with learning disabilities and the economically disadvantaged earlier in their academic careers even before they enter kindergarten, he said.
For example, there are special programs at the Lawrenceville Elementary School and the Ben Franklin Elementary School that target specific student populations, Dr. Riley said.
At LES, there is a pre-kindergarten class that mixes regular education and special education students in the same classroom. A new program is being started at Ben Franklin for 4-year-olds that mixes special education, regular education and economically disadvantaged students.
Finally, there is research that says that communities with "high social capital" can offset some of the effects of being economically disadvantaged may have on a child, he said. Interracial trust is high in those communities and the children perform better in school. Neighborhoods are tightly linked, he said.
Lawrence has already taken some steps in that direction, Dr. Riley said, pointing to the partnerships that the school district has made with the Eggerts Crossing Village community and the Lawrence Neighborhood Service Center. The school district is involved in after-school and summer enrichment programs at ECV and LNSC.
The school district’s curriculum also needs to be reviewed, Dr. Riley said. There is a need to pay particular attention to the mathematics curriculum, given the test results, he said. The emphasis on language arts literacy, on the whole, has paid off, he said.
Dr. Riley said he does not pay much attention to one-year changes in results, preferring to look at trends over several years. One or two students in a subgroup can make a difference in whether there is a demonstration of adequate yearly progress, for example, he said.
"You won’t move average test scores in a year," Dr. Riley said. "It take years. If you focus on test scores from year to year, it’s fruitless. You deal with a different group of children every year. If you want to move the LMS scores, you have to focus (on grades K-5)."
"Lawrence is a good school district that is having to adapt to a changing population," he said. "Our town changes and the school district has to change with it."

