NL removed from one watch list, put on two others

By STEPH TAHTINEN

Mt. Pleasant News

NEW LONDON ? New London Community School District has been moved off one watch list but has been put on two others.

?It?s kind of like that story about the kid trying to keep his fingers in the holes in the dyke. He plugs this one and one pops over there, he plugs that one and this one pops over here. We?re a little bit that way,? said Superintendent Chuck Reighard. ?We recognize that that?s the situation that we?re in, but at the same time we?ve got the laws that we?ve got, so that?s what we?re working with.?

Monday night, the New London school board reviewed the Annual Progress Report (APR) goals and the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) status, looking at the districts? federal testing scores and where it stood in terms of meeting its goals and federal requirements.

?We had a really exciting year this year when we got a lot of our results back,? said Allison Lair, curriculum director. ?I?m pleased to report that this year we did make all of our APR goals. That was really exciting.?

For this year, the district had goals set in the areas of math, science and reading comprehension.

For math, the goal was to raise the number of 6th grade students performing at or above the 41st percentile by 10 percent as 7th graders ? going from 64 percent proficient to 74 percent proficient.

?They blew that goal out of the water. It was raised to 82 percent,? said Lair. ?We raised the number of students on that one by 15 percent, which is very exciting.?

For science, the goal was to increase the number of 2nd grade students performing at or above the 41st percentile by seven percent as 3rd graders ? going from 72 percent proficient to 79 percent proficient. This goal was met and scores were raised to 82 percent proficient.

For reading comprehension, the district had a goal that the number of 9th grade students performing at or above the 41st percentile in the reading comprehension would increase by 12 percent as 10th graders ? going from 56 percent proficient to 68 percent proficient. This goal was met, and students tested at 68 percent proficient.

The district had set reading comprehension as one of its APR goals because it was on the watch list for this category in its grade 3-5 low SES students. However, with higher scores in this category, the district has not gotten off of the watch list at this level.

For the low SES students, 5th grade students raised scores from 40 percent proficient to 65 percent proficient and 4th grade raised scores from 50 percent proficient to 74 percent proficient. However, the 3rd grade students? scores decreased from 57 percent proficient to 42 percent proficient.

?That third grade is the group that we went from three sections down to two,? explained Lair.

To remedy this and attempt to improve scores, there will be another section added back to that class.

Although the district has done well in meeting these three goals, other academic areas have suffered and the district has been put on two more watch lists: elementary math and middle school reading.

?If you?re on a watch list, you have one year to get off,? explained Reighard. ?If you don?t get off the watch list in one year, then you become a school in need of assistance in that area. Once you become a school in need of assistance, no matter what you do next year, you?re on that list for two years.?

If a district comes up on the watch list in any area, that area then comes a new APR goal for the district.

For elementary math, the goal is that the number of students performing at or below the 40th percentile will decrease by 35 percent. This will decrease the number of non-proficient students from 21 to 14 while keeping all other students at or above proficient.

?Our plan of attack for improving those scores will be the same plan of attack we had for increasing the reading scores at Clark, in that we really use the math test and the data from that test to make some instructional decisions,? said Lair.

For reading comprehension at the middle school level, the goal is that the number of 7th grade students performing at or above the 41st percentile will increase by 10 percent as 8th graders ? going from 65 percent proficient to 75 percent proficient.

The district also set a goal for improving science scores in the high school. The goal is that the number of 8-10th grade students performing above the 90th percentile will increase by 15 percent as 9-11 graders, increasing the number of advanced students from 35 percent to 50 percent.

?We?re going to try to push more people up into that advanced, that 90 percent. It?s a different goal than what we?ve set in the past,? said Reighard, who said in the past the goals have always been about moving the non-performers up.

According to federal requirements, school districts are supposed to be at 100 percent proficiency by 2014.