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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

APS' 19% AYP Rate an Improvement

By Andrea Schoellkopf And Martin Salazar
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writers
          More Albuquerque schools made adequate yearly progress this year, but overall only 19 percent of the district's schools met state performance standards.
        Data released Monday show that 26 of 135 APS schools made the grade, up from 20 last year.
        With the federal government's goal of having 100 percent of students proficient in math and reading by 2014, measured by a rising bar, the trend is that more schools fail each year.
        But in Albuquerque, schools this year were told by their new superintendent to focus on meeting district-set goals rather than AYP.
        "Overall I'm very, very happy," Superintendent Winston Brooks said.
        Brooks, who has publicly criticized the national goal as "unrealistic," will give the district's take on the data during a news conference this morning at La Mesa Elementary, one of the schools in a high-poverty neighborhood that made AYP this year.
        "I'm a lot more interested in what kind of growth our schools made, as opposed to them meeting AYP," said Brooks, who was reviewing each school's performance and comparing it to individual goals set by the district.
        For instance, last year Atrisco Elementary had 29.3 percent of students testing as proficient in math. This year, the figure jumped to 42.6 percent, exceeding a goal of 37 percent. Reading scores kept the school from meeting AYP.
        The district has been criticized by Education Secretary Veronica Garcia for setting goals that may not meet what the federal government requires for improvement under No Child Left Behind.
        Statewide, more than two-thirds of schools fell into the category of failing to meet AYP.
        The AYP data released by the state are based on standardized tests taken by about 162,000 New Mexico students in third through eighth grades and 11th grade.
        Schools are judged in 37 categories, including whether English language learners, students with disabilities and different ethnic groups are meeting standards. If a school misses even one of the 37 standards, it is labeled as failing to meet AYP.
        Forty of the schools statewide that missed AYP missed it by just three or fewer indicators.
        In APS, most of the schools that made AYP were elementary schools. One high school, the new Volcano Vista, and two alternative schools, Family School and Early College Academy, also made the list. Like last year, no middle schools made AYP.
        In other results:
        Twelve of the 34 charter schools authorized by APS made adequate yearly progress, unchanged from last year, although there are two more schools. That list does not include state-authorized charters, which are not counted with the districts.
        Four of the 17 schools in the Rio Rancho district made AYP. Like most districts, its high school was not one of them. Spokeswoman Kim Vesely said two schools, Ernest Stapleton Elementary and the Cyber Academy, made AYP this year.
        Fourth-grade reading scores statewide showed 69 percent of whites and 67 percent of Asians are proficient compared to 47 percent of Hispanics, 46 percent of blacks and 36 percent of American Indians.
        "While we are seeing increases in student achievement across the board, we still see a stubborn achievement gap persist," Garcia said. "Again, in part, this is because as minority students perform better, Caucasian students also continue to perform better."
        In an interview with the Journal last week, Gov. Bill Richardson said he wants to see more progress in the achievement gap and on the dropout rate.
       
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