The No Child Left Behind Act states that public schools must make Adequate Yearly Progress in the content areas of Reading and Math. To measure AYP, each state tests all students grades 3 - 8 and grade 11. In addition to "whole school" performance, NCLB also recognizes specific subgroups that must make AYP, thus eliminating the possibility of a perceived high performing school "hiding" the performance of a subgroup of students within the much larger "whole school" data set. There are several identified subgroups, most notable to CMS are "students with education disabilities" and "economically disadvantaged students". In the state of New Hampshire, schools who have subgroups populated by greater than 10 students, are accountable for those groups. Since CMS has more than 10 students in both of the above mentioned categories, it is held accountable for each. Schools who fail to make AYP two years in a row in a content area, either as a whole school or on any of their subgroups, become a School in Need of Improvement (SINI). Once designated a SINI, a school must make AYP two years in a row in that content area and in all subgroups to no longer be designated a SINI. With that background, let's look at CMS's story:
Three years ago, CMS earned SINI status in the area of mathematics because of the performance of its students with educational disabilities. Two years ago, that subgroup made AYP in math, however, economically disadvantaged students did not. Last year, CMS made AYP in math for all subgroups, meaning that if CMS made AYP in math for all subgroups this year, we would no longer be a SINI. At a Exeter Region Cooperative School Board Meeting early this year, I told the board that we were "cautiously optimistic" that we would make AYP. Unfortunately I was wrong. While our economically disadvantaged students did make AYP in math, our student with educational disabilities missed the mark. Based on these preliminary results (there is an appeals process) CMS will continue to remain a SINI for at least two more years.
While NCLB recognizes subgroups for accountability purposes, we do not look at our designation as a SINI as an indictment on any one group. We are a SINI because of our inability to make AYP in the content area of math regardless of the performance of any one subgroup. We know from Dr. John Cronin's visit in November that our low achieving student- independent of subgroup identification - are not growing as fast as our high achieving students. In effect, the achievement gap at CMS is widening. This AYP designation only corroborates his findings.
The Good to Great Committee will be making its recommendations to the CMS faculty next week as to how to close this achievement gap. There after, the committee will be presenting these recommendations to the school board. I look forward to reporting about those recommendations in future blog posts.
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