An SAD 17 official questions the emphasis on “failing schools.”
PARIS – It’s too bad the federal No Child Left Behind Act focuses on so-called “failing” schools, SAD 17 Curriculum Director Kathy Elkins said Friday.
Even though Oxford Hills Middle School eighth-graders failed to make “adequate yearly progress” in reading and math, the school as a whole did meet the requirements in those two subject areas, she said.
Elkins thinks the state’s Maine Learning Results standards, passed in July 1997, are “a much better way” of assessing student performance than the federal standards.
“To focus on failing schools – that is the wrong side of the legislation,” she said.
The middle school was the only SAD 17 school among 144 schools not meeting the act’s standards according to a monitoring list released Friday by the Maine Department of Education.
The eighth-graders scored five points lower than the state average in both reading and math in last year’s Maine Educational Assessment testing. They made the list because of lower than standard scores of special education students, one of six subgroups whose test results now must be included under the new federal law.
Two other schools in the district – Otisfield Community School and Waterford Memorial School – were recognized for making improvements in reading.
“We have a tremendous focus on literacy,” Elkins said.
Middle school teachers this year are taking a course designed to help students boost their reading comprehension, said Elkins. A National Science Foundation curriculum called Mathscape is also being piloted this year for seventh- and eighth-grade students.
A second Science Foundation program, Investigations, is being implemented for students in grades K-5, said Elkins.
At a recent school board meeting, several board members were dismayed to learn that there were 29 different ways a school could end up on the federal list. Some of them said including the scores of a few students with an identified disability with all students in a class tended to skew the results.
But Elkins said that the requirement to look at subgroups will mean the district will focus more on individual students “to use the standards in the most positive way.”
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