Leavenworth schools show big progress on state test scores

Some results are in for Kansas state assessment tests — and Leavenworth School District administrators are feeling good.

Released by the Kansas State Department of Education to the Kansas State Board of Education during a meeting Tuesday, the results for schools that receive federal Title I funding show big improvements for Leavenworth — facilities like Howard Wilson and David Brewer both made Adequate Yearly Progress after not meeting that standard last year. Both will be removed from the “on watch” lists. Earl Lawson Elementary School made AYP for the first time and will come off the “on improvement” list.

The scores for non-Title I schools will not be officially released until September, but School Superintendent Kelly Harris said early results indicate Leavenworth High School has also met AYP for the first time.

Harris said the news is cause to celebrate.

“It’s just been amazing,” she said of the effort to bring scores up.

The AYP scores relate to the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which required states to develop and test students’ performance. Each year, the percentage of students required to meet proficiency standards in math and reading increases.

To meet AYP in 2010-2011, the required districtwide “cut scores” were 81.3 percent proficiency in reading and 76.4 percent proficiency in math. The figures are the same for the high-school level assessments; percentages are slightly higher for students assessed between kindergarten and eighth grade.

Those scores are the standard for all of the 10 different groups of 30 or more students that are assessed and factored in when AYP ins considered for a building or a district. The student groups include separate ethnicities, students with disabilities, those who receive free and reduced lunches and all students. Harris said Leavenworth is somewhat unique in that all but two of the student groups are assessed and included in the state’s released results.

For 2010-2011, eight districts were added to the state’s “on improvement” list for a total of 24, according to statistics from the Kansas State Department of Education. A total of 37 Title I individual schools across the state were listed as “on improvement” for 2010-2011, up from 32 last year.

However, the results released Tuesday showed that all of the schools in Leavenworth that receive Title I funding met the required cut scores in all applicable student groups and have officially been taken off the “on improvement” list by the state, according to Dr. Eric Punswick, associate superintendent for the district.

Punswick said the improvements in AYP scores for USD 453 comes after some big changes to the way the district’s teachers and administrators approach assessments.

He said he credits some of the success to a reorganization of district leadership, as well as a number of measures at the individual level that seek to help students make the grade. That includes the addition of dedicated mathematics and reading coaches at each of the elementary schools who facilitated reading and math “interventions” for students who appeared to be at risk of falling behind.

And while previously the district’s elementary schools had at least three different sets of curriculum, Harris said all have now been aligned with state assessment standards. The district also utilized Kansas Learning Network, an organization that is contracted through the state and funded at the federal level that provides technical assistance and expertise to the district.

Harris said the district increased its focus on professional development and leadership as well as instruction in order to give its teachers the knowledge necessary to understand the data related to assessments and to make adjustments in order to succeed on the tests.

“I think our teachers did an amazing job of assessing the needs of each student,” Punswick said.

Not all of the results were such good news for the district. USD 453, which as a whole is listed as a Title I entity, failed to make AYP for the fourth year in a row and will continue to be in “corrective action,” though Punswick said even that bit of bad news comes with a silver lining. He said a higher percentage of students this year scored “proficient” on the tests when measuring for all students than ever since the inception of NCLB.

Still, having the district as a whole not meet AYP is cause for concern, according to Harris.

“It is absolutely not acceptable,” she said.

However, Harris also said that the fact that more schools in USD 453 are meeting proficiency standards even as NCLB standards get tougher each year leading up to the 2014 goal of 100-percent proficiency indicates that the measures put in place are working.

In the next year, she said the district will continue to utilize the KLN and other measures to make sure that the upward trend continues.

“It is our expectation that we will be coming off that list,” she said of the district’s place on the state’s corrective action list.