Sisters schools meet federal requirements

Once again, all three Sisters schools met the adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

A preliminary report of 2004-05 AYP ratings for Oregon was released Friday, August 5, by the State Department of Education. The ratings will become final in October unless something happens to change them.

Sisters officials were afraid the high school might get nicked this year for failing to test a sufficient proportion of its special education students. While that fear proved unfounded, Human Resources Manager Tim Comfort said the district will work to reduce the risk in the coming year.

Superintendent Ted Thonstad was out of the district on vacation when the report was issued.

The AYP system is frustrating to many educators because of its plethora of categories and because it threatens each school with all-or-nothing results. The failure of one group of students to meet any of the standards of performance will keep an entire school from receiving AYP approval.

Moreover, schools are rated, again by groups, for attendance and for the proportion of students taking achievement tests.

The core of the program involves determining how well students did on state-administered tests in reading and math. For AYP purposes, students are divided into groups such as the economically disadvantaged, the disabled, those with a limited command of English, racial or ethnic minorities, etc.

Each group must achieve at the appropriate benchmark level for the whole test-taking unit. This year, the benchmarks moved to 51 percent achieving the state proficiency standard in English and 49 percent doing so in math.

In both cases, the benchmarks were 10 percentage points higher than last year. They will continue to rise in the future.

In most cases, except for the negative publicity, schools suffer no penalty from failing to receive an AYP designation. The main exceptions are schools that receive Title I money — federal assistance to schools with high proportions of students from poor families.

If those schools fail to meet AYP standards, they must offer students a priority transfer to a higher-scoring school or provide free tutoring with a tutor of the family’s choice.

Ironically, Title I schools as a whole in Oregon came out better in the 2004-05 AYP ratings than schools receiving no such aid. State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo noted that 76 percent of the Title I elementary and middle schools met AYP standards compared with only 60 percent of the non-Title I schools, while 37 percent of the Title I high schools met AYP compared with 20 percent of the non-Title I high schools.

“I think the real news is that Title I schools, which get extra funding from the federal government, met the standard at a much higher rate than other schools,” Castillo said.

“When schools are given the resources they need and focus on clear expectations and consequences, then we see the results we all want. We saw it in last year’s report, and it is true again this year.”

Some schools in all of the other four larger districts in Central Oregon failed to meet AYP standards. Bend-La Pine had 10 schools that did not receive the designation, Redmond had four, Crook County (Prineville) two, and Jefferson County (Madras) three.