School report cards are in for 2002-03

Sisters Elementary School was the local star of the 2002-03 school "report card" issued last week by the Oregon Department of Education.

The elementary school maintained the same Exceptional rating it earned the year before. Sisters Middle School retained its same Satisfactory mark while the high school slipped from Exceptional to Satisfactory.

The grading system has five levels: Exceptional, Strong, Satisfactory, Low and Unacceptable. The overall ratings take into account student scores on statewide tests, score improvements from past years, the degree of student participation in statewide testing, and attendance and dropout rates.

Sisters Elementary Principal Tim Comfort was pleased with his school's showing. The state department told him that only 41 of the schools receiving an Exceptional grade last year repeated this year. Report cards are issued for more than 1,000 schools around the state.

One reason it's difficult to stay on top is that much of the overall rating is based on year-to-year improvement in average scores on the annual state assessments (tests covering selected subjects, given annually in grades 3, 5, 8 and 10).

"We're real fortunate that in most academic areas we're still showing significant improvement, but the higher we go the harder it gets to maintain that," Comfort said.

Comfort was careful to credit the students, parents and staff for the school's success, along with "community support in making our schools a priority... People say 'We want a great school here' so I get the message. We need to do that."

Insufficient test score improvement, especially in math, apparently caused the high school to drop from an Exceptional rating for 2001-02 to Satisfactory in 2002-03. Acting Principal Bob Macauley said the school would have received a Strong rating if its math scores were just .2 of a point higher.

In the high school's case, only 10th graders take the annual state assessments tests. To determine "improvement" for the latest school report cards the state compared the average assessment results for 2002-03 and 2001-02 with results from the two prior years.

The purpose was to gauge improvement over the past four years.

"The formula is kind of like the BCS system (for determining which college football teams play in which bowl games)," Macauley said of the overall rating. "It's a concoction of things... We didn't go down in test scores, we just didn't show improvement."

He noted that Sisters High School did well in many respects last year, particularly when measured against other high schools in Central Oregon, none of which received a rating above "Satisfactory."

The principal noted that "we are one of two (Central Oregon) high schools that met the Adequate Yearly Progress standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (the other was Culver), we had 63 percent of our students receiving CIMs (state Certificates of Initial Mastery) and we had a 97 percent graduation rate overall.

"So those are the kind of highlights for me which indicate that we're still on the right track and doing good things."

Middle School Principal Lora Nordquist was philosophical about her school's Satisfactory rating, the same as the previous two years.

"I guessed that we would get an average rating because it's a three-year trend and although our reading and math scores for last year's eighth graders went up, I believe it'll be another year before that's reflected...So I'm hoping that within the next year or two...we might move to a Strong rating," she said.

"The good news is that we remain well above the state average in our test scores and we remain above our comparison groups in schools of similar size and socio-economic status. So I tend to look a little more at those measures than I do the school report card. They worked hard to design a (report card) system that was fair, but they can only look at a very few characteristics."

Noting that Culver was the only middle school in Central Oregon to receive a Strong rating, Nordquist said, "I know the situation there. Two years ago they were Unsatisfactory and they have worked really hard and made some significant changes so they got a Strong because of improvement. But their scores are much lower than ours are. I think Culver has done a really good job and I don't want to take anything away from them."

Nordquist said it's "a thrill" that Sisters Elementary School received an Exceptional grade for the second year in a row.

"But I would characterize all three schools in Sisters as strong," she concluded.

Other ratings slipped this year

By Don Robinson

Last year, Sisters High School joined an elite group of four Oregon high schools that received Exceptional rating on the state school report card for 2001-02. The other three schools were notice- ably larger than Sisters High school and all were in the Willamette valley -- Lincoln in Portland, Sheldon in Eugene and Tualatin in Tigard School District.

School people who are familiar with the report card formula generally agree that, particularly for secondary schools, it's hard to win an Exceptional rating two years in a row because so much of the overall rating depends upon year-to-year improvement in test scores.

As Sisters High School Acting Principal Bob Macauley said last week, "If you're Exceptional, there's really no place to go but down."

Macauley was somewhat chagrined, though, that Sisters High's rating for 2002-03 slipped two notches, to Satisfactory. He would have been happier with a Strong rating, which the school barely missed.

"The good news," he said, "is that when you go down to Satisfactory you can go up again."

Among last year's top-rated four only Lincoln maintained its Exceptional grade on the 2002-03 report card. Sheldon and Tualatin both earned Strong ratings.