Majority of State School Systems Meet AYP Goals (AL)

August 5, 2010

There were 51 school systems and 342 schools in Alabama that did not make Adequate Yearly Progress during the 2009-2010 school year, according to in­formation released by the state Department of Education on Monday.

The state’s public schools do, however, continue to show pro­gress, state Superintendent of Education Joe Morton said.

Morton pointed to rising scores on exams such as the Ala­bama Reading and Mathematics Test during the last five years. But more stringent standards have made AYP more difficult to achieve, he added.

Overall, more than 75 per­cent of Alabama public schools made AYP, which is based on schools meeting 100 percent of their goals for the year.

The requirements for AYP became stricter in 2010 and will continue to become more strin­gent each year leading up to 2014. At that point, all schools will be required to have 100 per­cent proficiency in math and reading under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Morton said the state has a good chance of raising the state’s proficiency level to 90 percent, but the 100 percent re­quirement is unattainable.

“It requires the impossible,” Morton said of the law.

He called for re-authoriza­tion of the law by Congress to set goals rather than requirements.

Of the 51 schools that failed to make AYP, 30 did not meet the goal for special education stu­dents. One of the reasons for the downturn in special education is a change in how special edu­cation students are identified, Morton said.

Things such as pre-K pro­grams and the state’s reading initiative are leading to fewer students being identified as needing special education, Mor­ton said. With more students learning to read earlier, there are not as many identified as having learning disabilities, he said.

“The more we got involved with students in K through 3, the fewer referrals we got to spe­cial education,” he said.

That leaves a higher percent­age of students in special educa­tion programs with actual learn­ing disabilities, said Mabry Whetstone, state direc tor of spe- cial education.

“Most of these students with disabilities have intellectual disabilities,” Whetstone said.

Improvements in test scores for special education students in Alabama have mostly outpaced gains made on the national lev­el, Whetstone said.

Schools that do not make AYP for two years are identified for school improvement and are subject to more state supervi­sion. Also, parents can choose to move their children to a differ­ent school if their children at­tend a school under school im­provement.

There were 127 schools desig­nated for school improvement this year, an increase of five from 2009.

School attendance in the state dropped 4 percent, from 98 to 94, during the 2009-2010 school year.

That 4 percent equals about 29,000 students and is attributed to the effects of the H1N1 virus, Morton said. Those absences could have had an impact on some of the lower scores, he said.

Morton said people should not be too quick to label a school as “failing” if it failed to make AYP.

“For the last five years, some of those failing schools have made improvements all five years,” Morton added.

With higher standards each year, however, schools that make progress still might not make AYP, he said.