District narrowly misses AYP

Boundary Country School District narrowly missed making the Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the 2009-2010 school year.

“We are doing an excellent job, we just missed two categories. But we exceeded standards in all other 39 areas,” said Jan Bayer, curriculum director.

“Our students are receiving a quality education. We are improving instructional practices to meet those subgroup needs.”

The two categories missed in the district were students with disabilities reading and students with disabilities math.

In order to make AYP in a category, the students needed to outperform the previous year’s scores according to Bayer. The results went from 70.55 percent to 62.5 percent in reading and 62.33 percent to 53.1 percent in math for students with disabilities.

Individual schools within the district also have to meet AYP standards.

 Bonners Ferry High School, Riverside High School, Valley View Elementary, Naples Elementary, Mt. Hall Elementary and Evergreen Elementary all made AYP standards last year.

“The high school made a tremendous improvement,” said Bayer. “They went from school improvement year four to out of school improvement. We changed the math program at the high school and that helped make those changes.”

If schools do not meet AYP standards two years in a row, then they are placed in school improvement status.

 There are six levels of school improvement status and if a school continually doesn’t meet AYP standards and reaches Level 6, Idaho’s  Department of Education is federally mandated to intervene.

If a school improves its performance then it can move up in levels, as did BFHS.

Boundary Middle School was the only school in the district that did not meet AYP standard, missing it in three categories: Students with disabilities reading, students with disabilities math and economically disadvantaged math. As with the district, each category has to exceed the prior year’s scores.

Economically disadvantaged math went from 83.4 percent to 81.3 percent, students with disabilities reading went from 70.55 percent to 67.4 percent and students with disabilities math went from 62.33 percent to 47.6 percent.

“We have a large number of special education students at the middle school that must meet the same standards as their peers,” said Bayer.

“We are working closely with the Special Education Director to determine the best course of action…to intervene early…and try new strategies to meet their needs.”

Since the middle school did not meet AYP standards last year, it will need to surpass AYP standards for the next two years to move out of school improvement status.

When a district is in school improvement status, 10 percent of Title I funds have to be set aside for school improvement.

According to Bayer, this money can be used for professional development of educators and purchasing resources to meet the students’ needs.

One confusing aspect of AYP standards, according to Bayer, is that all schools can make AYP but that doesn’t mean the district will make AYP.

 Two years ago all the schools surpassed AYP standards but the district did not.

This often happens if the results in a category at an individual school have too few students to be counted but at the district level there are enough students in the category for the results to be counted.

Final results for the schools will be released Nov. 1, with the ISAT-Alt results included.

The only school in the district whose results might change is Valley View Elementary. Results are based on graduation rates and ISAT (Idaho Standards Achievement Test) scores for third through eight grade and tenth grade, along with science scores for fifth, seventh and 10th grade.

“We are doing well,” said Bayer. “Our graduation rates are high compared to state graduation rates and extremely high compared to the nation. We should be excited about our graduation rates.”

For the 2008-2009 school year, Bonners Ferry High School had a 92 percent graduation rate and Riverside High School had a 75 percent graduation rate. The state of Idaho has a graduation rate of 91.69 percent.

The United States had a graduation rate of 68.8 percent in 2007, according to Education Weekly.