Sky Oaks Elementary on the road to recovery
Elementary school makes AYP, District 191 making progress but not at pace feds would prefer
by Aaron Vehling
Thisweek Newspapers
For students who are watching the school year approach too quickly, August can be the Sunday of summer.
It can be that way for school districts, too, as they prepare for the return of students.
But August is also the time of the year that the Minnesota Department of Education releases Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) data, which assess how schools are performing based on test scores and a moving benchmark set by the U.S. Department of Education.
The results do not always bring with them the best of news, but for Sky Oaks Elementary on East 134th Street in Burnsville, there is reason to celebrate.
After reaching stage two of sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law last year, Sky Oaks has once again made AYP.
“We’re really excited about that,” said principal Kay Fecke, “but we still have our work cut out for us.”
After three straight years of failure to make AYP, the school was hit with sanctions that required it to provide free tutoring upon request to low-income students, and to offer parents the opportunity to transfer their kids to another school.
Fecke said she is excited by the results, but Sky Oaks will have to make AYP again next year before the sanctions are lifted. So the school will still offer the tutoring (paid for from federal Title 1 funds) to students who qualify for free or subsidized lunch, as well as the transfer option.
A solution
On the heels of last year’s second stage of sanctions, Fecke said she and staff set forth to analyze testing data and determine ways to help the students improve on the tests.
“We just keep trying to be smarter about how to use the data and analyze what students really need, as opposed to a scatter gun approach,” she said. “We are able to look at each students’ strengths and areas of need.”
Schools that do not make AYP and accept Title 1 funds are vulnerable to sanctions. If a school does not accept those funds, sanctions do not apply, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
From that point, schools are divided into subgroups, and if even one subgroup does not demonstrate progress then the entire school is labeled as “not making AYP.”
Sky Oaks has its challenges: 56 percent of its students receive free or reduced-price lunch, which is an indicator of the poverty level of the student body. In addition, Fecke said, the school has a high percentage of English Language Learners (ELL).
Neither of those are inherently negative, but “it does have an impact in that some kids come to school not as similarly prepared.”
That said, Fecke noted that she and the staff at Sky Oaks tried their best to help students tackle the tests to ensure the “kids knew we believed they could do it.”
She said that in addition to improved instruction, parents and teachers sent the students post cards with affirmations such as “we believe you can succeed.”
The sheer anxiety and stress surrounding test taking, especially the MCA-IIs used to determine AYP, can often serve to derail the aspirations of even the most astute test-takers.
But Fecke said she had a few students tell her this time around was a lot less painful.
She told of one instance in which a fourth grader “turned to the teachers and said ‘Are these the MCAs? It doesn’t feel the same as last year.’”
Overall, Fecke has high hopes for her kids.
“Our goal is all our children not just making AYP, but achieving the proficiency they deserve,” she said. “By golly, I’m just proud of the students.”
Across the district
As a whole, the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district has been making progress (reducing the number of subgroups in various schools not making AYP), but it is still not achieving the level of progress the NCLB law requires. Overall, according to the district, 366 of the 429 subgroups the district is responsible for have achieved AYP.
Across the state more schools have not made AYP: 1,048 of the 2,291 schools in the state. The NCLB Act requires 100 percent of students in all districts to achieve proficiency by 2014.
At Vista View Elementary, which is in its fourth year of not achieving the desired progress, there is only one subgroup not making AYP: special education students on the MCA-II reading test, said Vista View principal Susan Risius.
At this point, Vista View has entered stage three, despite making progress to bring its subgroups up to proficiency.
From here, the school is in a “corrective action” status, which includes additional professional development, possible staff replacement and the institution of new curricula, according to NCLB literature from the U.S. Department of Education.
Risius said staff at her school are unsure as to what corrective action they will take. She will have to consult Superintendent Randy Clegg and the Title I and Special Education director, she said.
She added that the school districts that would be required to go the extent of restructuring as a corrective action are those districts in which all the schools do not make AYP. Risius said she does not see restructuring happening at Vista View because of this.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable federal expectation for 2014, Risius said she sees a silver lining in the NCLB act: It encourages professional development to improve instruction for constantly changing times.
“We need to be up front with learning and growing leaders,” she said, “and be the best we can for every child.”
Clegg said in a statement the district is seeing growth in students’ scores, “but not fast enough to meet the rising expectations set for us. Every year, the bar is raised and we must continue our efforts to make the progress necessary to improve student achievement across the district.”
For more information on the AYP results and the NCLB law, visit the MN Dept. of Education’s web site.
E-mail Aaron Vehling at aaron.vehling@ecm-inc.com.
