Incomplete results fall short of goals
By:Eileen Oldfield
While students’ preliminary test scores showed progress in most areas measured by the No Child Left Behind Act, failure to make the designation in several areas is causing concern for school officials.
According to acting Superintendent Lisa Antunes, the district’s latest results on the standardized state tests showed improvement in most areas including the middle school categories that have vexed school officials for several years but missed the goals in several subgroups.
The NCLB Act sets requirements for schools to improve scores on standardized tests for students, with breakdowns by gender, special needs and language background.
Failure to meet the required gains can result in penalties for the district, and last year, the eighth-grade special education students failed to meet the required goal for a third consecutive year.
This year, the problem areas are language arts and literacy and math among elementary and middle-school level special education students, Dr. Antunes said in a presentation to the Board of Education last week.
Preliminary results show special education students in grades four, five and six missing the yearly progress goal. However, Dr. Antunes noted that the scores did not include the early disabled students’ scores, which were not available yet.
Once in, she said she believes the results could change the subgroup’s scores to meet the required yearly progress.
"I’m pretty confident that we will meet the Adequate Yearly Progress goals for language arts after the rest of the tests are in," Dr. Antunes said at the meeting.
Math scores for grade seven special-education students were also down from 55.8 percent proficient in 2006 to 42.8 percent proficient this year. The AYP for middle-school math is 62 percent proficient.
Eighth-grade special-education student’s math scores have been a concern for the past four years, since the district failed to make adequate yearly progress in this in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The district avoided the state or federal intervention that occurs when a school does not make AYP in four consecutive years.
Students classified in the Hispanic subgroup also failed to meet the requirements in the language and literacy sections of the grade 11 High School Proficiency Assessment test.
Dr. Antunes believes the missing scores will also raise scores for this group sufficiently.
Language arts and literacy scores on the High School Proficiency Assessment dropped from 91.9 percent proficiency last year to 78.5 percent proficiency for the Hispanic subgroup, the first year Hillsborough failed to meet requirements in this area.
A score of 85 percent proficient was needed for an adequate yearly progress designation in high school language arts and literacy this year.

