(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - Of 507 Alaska public schools, 236 schools – or 46.5 percent – made adequate yearly progress the last school year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Alaska Department of Education & Early Development announced today. The Department reported the percentage of schools making adequate yearly progress increased almost one percentage point from the school year 2010-2011.

Adequate yearly progress (AYP) is the cornerstone of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under the law, schools and school districts are held accountable for showing progress in the percentage of students who score proficient on assessments in language arts and math. The national goal is that all students will be proficient in language arts and math by the end of the 2013-2014 school year.

Of the 10 schools in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District, the Alaska Department of Education reported that half the schools met adequate yearly progress requirements. Those schools meeting requirements according to the Department of Education are:

• Ketchikan Ketchikan Charter School (Proficient in Language Arts 88%, Proficient in Math 87%),
• Ketchikan Ketchikan Regional Youth Facility (No information provided; however, listed by state as meeting AYP.)
• Ketchikan Point Higgins School (Proficient in Language Arts 93%, Proficient in Math 89%)
  
• Ketchikan Schoenbar Middle School (Proficient in Language Arts 84%, Proficient in Math 72%),
• Ketchikan Tongass School of Arts & Sciences (Proficient in Language Arts 82%, Proficient in Math 73%),

Schools in Ketchikan not meeting annual yearly progress for the 2011-2012 school year are:

• Ketchikan Fast Track (Proficient in Language Arts 55%, Proficient in Math 42%)
• Ketchikan Fawn Mountain Elementary (Proficient in Language Arts 79%, Proficient in Math 69%)
• Ketchikan Houghtaling Elementary (Proficient in Language Arts 78%, Proficient in Math 74%)
• Ketchikan Ketchikan High School (Proficient in Language Arts 78%, Proficient in Math 63%)
• Ketchikan Revilla Jr./Sr. High School (Proficient in Language Arts 73%, Proficient in Math 27%),

Under NCLB, schools on the “did not make AYP” list are said be needing improvement, or in “improvement status.”

Regarding Ketchikan graduation rates, Ketchikan High School reported a four-year graduation of 87.97% and Revilla High School reported a four -year graduation rate of 60.98%.

Every year, the state measures schools’ progress toward the federal law’s goal that 100 percent of students be proficient in language arts and mathematics by spring 2014. Students’ proficiency is measured by their performance in state assessments in reading, writing and math in grades 3 through 10. (The reading and writing scores are combined into one language arts score for calculating adequate yearly progress.)

Each year under No Child Left Behind, schools must meet targets for the percentage of students who are proficient, as well as targets for attendance, graduation, and participation in state assessments. In all, there are up to 40 targets for each school, depending on a school’s size and grade configuration.

If schools meet all of their targets, they have made adequate yearly progress. The targets for school year 2011-2012 are the same as for the prior school year: 82.88 percent proficient in language arts; 74.57 percent proficient in mathematics; 95 percent assessment-participation rate; 85 percent attendance rate (for schools that do not have grade 12); and 85 percent graduation rate or an improvement of 2 percentage points in the graduation rate (for schools that have grade 12).

The targets for language arts, mathematics, and participation in assessments apply not only to a school’s assessed students as a whole, but to nine subgroups of students, for subgroups that have at least 26 students in a school: African-American, Alaska Native/American Indian, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Multi-Ethnic, Economically Disadvantaged, Students with Disabilities, and Limited English Proficient Students. New this year is a federal requirement that subgroups of students meet the graduation rate target if there are at least three students in the subgroup.

According to the Alaska Department of Education, statewide public schools demonstrated some positive results:

• Seventy-one schools that did not reach their targets in the 2010-2011 school year sufficiently improved to meet the targets in 2011-2012.
• Eight other schools that had struggled in the past have now made adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years and no longer face consequences under No Child Left Behind
• The statewide graduation rate for the 2011-2012 school year is 69.39 percent, 1.39 percentage points above the previous year. In the 2011-2012 school year, 7,180 public school students graduated with a high school diploma.

 

Edited by Mary Kauffman, SitNews

On the Web:

List of Schools Meeting AYP by District - pdf

List of Schools Not Meeting AYP by District - pdf

Summary of Schools Considered for AYP by District - pdf

Consequences of Not Meeting Adequate Yearly Progress - pdf

Understanding AYP in Public Schools - pdf

School Site AYP Worksheets

Source of News: 

Alaska Department of Education
www.eed.state.ak.us

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