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digg itI am bothered by the negative tone of this article’s title, although the article itself is fine. Wouldn’t it have been just as easy, and equally correct, to have titled it “Ten of 13 Smyth County Schools Meet NCLB Standards”? The fact is that in spite of the obstacles, 10 Smyth County Schools essentially scored 100% on a 29-question “test,” a test on which one single deficiency equals failure. No stakeholder in this process feels the failure to achieve AYP more personally than do the teachers--let’s offer the teachers and the students as much encouragement as possible. One reason that the general population believes America’s public schools are failing is because many people tend to skim seemingly sensational headlines like this one without reading further for the facts.
Three schools miss No Child Left Behind standards
Smyth County News: News >
Sun Aug 24, 2008 - 01:40 PM
By DAN KEGLEY/Staff
While Smyth County school leaders anticipate the final report from the State Department of Education next Wednesday, preliminary data indicate three schools, and therefore the district, did not make Adequate Yearly Progress, the federal No Child Left Behind benchmarking program.
“We’re still looking at the data,” Dr. Michael Robinson, superintendent of schools, said Thursday, “but right now it looks like three schools did not make AYP,” Marion Intermediate, Marion Primary and Sugar Grove Combined schools.
“Since they didn’t make it, then the district didn’t make it,” he said, based on last spring’s testing under the program.
The AYP standards are moving targets raised by 4 percent every year, Robinson said, toward a fulfillment of a federal mandate “requiring states to set annual benchmarks for achievement in reading and mathematics leading to an objective of 100 percent proficiency by 2014,” according to the Virginia Department of Education.
No Child Left Behind seeks to have all students – regardless of race, poverty level or disability – proficient in reading and mathematics, six years from now.
“For a school, school division or the commonwealth to make AYP, it must meet or exceed 29 benchmarks for participation in statewide testing, achievement in reading and mathematics, and attendance or science (elementary and middle schools) or graduation (high schools),” VDOE said. “Missing a single benchmark may result in a school or school division not making AYP.”
“Even if we made the same score as last year, we would not make AYP,” Robinson said.
The county’s other 10 schools, not counting the career and technology center to which the standards do not apply, made AYP, the superintendent said.
All of the schools otherwise met standards required to maintain state accreditation, Robinson said.
Last August school officials were excited by preliminary news later confirmed that all of the schools made AYP on the previous spring’s testing. In September 2007, DOE announced the county was one of the few divisions in the state to make AYP.
Smyth was one of 18 divisions to make AYP at the division level and one of 23 divisions where all schools made AYP.
This year’s AYP news follows a more positive and anticipated development for the school system, the final awarding of district accreditation.
A review team from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement recommended accreditation for the Smyth school division last spring. Last week, Superintendent Dr. Mike Robinson said that status was awarded.
Jimmie Lawrence, state director with SACS/CASI, reported in a special school board meeting in April the findings of the quality assurance review of the school system. Improvements in technology and parental involvement emerged as the county schools’ two key needs.
Another need involved “facilities,” and the school board had already taken steps toward improvement. A school facilities study was in its end phases when Lawrence appeared before the school board. Now, a master plan is completed at available on the school division Web site, http://www.SCSB.org.
School administrators said all of the challenges and recommendations in the accreditation report represent directions in which the division is already moving.
