MTHS and Applegarth fail on No Child Left Behind
By: Lacey Korevec
MONROE Despite districtwide improvement, Monroe Township High School and Applegarth Middle School did not pass the test.
Both schools met 39 out of 40 requirements on the Adequate Yearly Progress Standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act, Superintendent Ralph Ferrie said at a meeting Aug. 30. As a result, the schools have been placed under the "in need of improvement" designation.
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. The law sets requirements for teachers and requires states to establish student performance standards and evaluate them annually. The law allows states to develop their own system of evaluating student assessment based on student proficiency tests for language arts and math. Continued problems meeting the state’s goals could allow for parents to shift their children to other district schools and eventual state intervention.
The results are based on testing of math and language arts literacy in grades three through eight and grade 11. Performance and attendance are the two categories the testing is judged on. There are 10 indicators under each of the two subjects’ categories that show the progress of students of specific economic and ethnic groups.
Woodland, Mill Lake and Brookside schools met all 40 indicators in each category. Dr. Ferrie said the high school and middle school came up short because of students with disabilities scores on the math section. Despite the shortfall, Applegarth and the high school performed better than last year, when they met 38 out of 40 indicators for students with disabilities in language arts and math.
Last year, Brookside also met 38 out of the 40 AYP standards for students with disabilities in language arts and mathematics.
"Do we want our special education students to do better on the math section," he said. "Absolutely. And we’re working very diligently to get that done. But from year to year that group’s characteristic may be different because of their classifications and the number of students in the group etc."
The district plans to improve future scores by continuing to increase professional development for teachers and enhancing curriculum, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Chris Tienken said Wednesday.
"Those are the things we can control," he said. "We continue to offer more and more professional development for our special education teachers, who are highly qualified."
Dr. Ferrie said the district is concerned about Applegarth and will work hard to ensure its future success.
"We are hiring mathematics teachers for our middle school now who are certified teachers of mathematics," he said.
Still, he said, the fact that the middle school and high school are considered by the state to be "in need of improvement" reads worse than it is.
"The one indicator that was not met is students with disabilities, math," he said. "That’s a long stretch from a headline in the newspaper that says Applegarth Middle School is in need of improvement. I take exception to that. And the same thing with Monroe Township High School ‘In need of improvement.’ "
About seven months ago, the district formalized a 20-point plan that will help address the needs of special education students, Dr. Tienken said.
"We’re conducting ongoing articulation and we have a thorough data analysis that was accomplished to see exactly where our children are having some difficulties, particularly in the sub group that are not achieving the indicators," Dr. Ferrie said.

