There is always room for improvement, right?! Innovations, research and technology have helped schools continue to get better at the job we do. The measures of success that we currently use under the No Child Left Behind legislation require significant growth with all student demographic groups every year. Emerson has both good news and bad news to report as a result of our 2009-10 test scores.
Here is some bad news first: we did not make much growth school-wide in math; we did not reach our goals for our students with disabilities; and we did not move our English Learners far enough along for them to meet meet their Adequate Yearly Progress targets. There is no excuse for this, we dropped the ball. We should have met every goal.
Some good news: when we set our goals last year we looked at a trend for our African American population (and Emerson is one of the only schools in RUSD with a large enough population to have what is considered to be a "significant" subgroup) that was in an academic decline. We identified a plan to focus additional resources on our target population, and we effectively increased the percentage of African American students who scored Proficient from 46% to 56.8% in Language Arts. We saw similar gains in math with our African American students.
More bad news: because of the way the Adequate Yearly Progress is measured, if a school misses meeting its goals in even one subgroup for three consecutive years, the school is placed in Program Improvement. This is why you were sent the requisite letter in the mail this week.
And some good news: In every grade level, 2nd -6th grades in both language arts and math (with one exception-5th grade math) Emerson made achievement gains! For example, in 2008-09 in 3rd grade, we had 39% of our students score Proficient or Advanced, but last year 48% scored Proficient or Advanced in language arts. School-wide we increased our proficiency in language arts by 12% points, which definitely made us smile.
More bad news: The growth wasn't enough! We did not meet either of our district-wide goals for increasing proficiency by 15% school-wide; nor did we make a 20% increase with our English Learner sub-group.
But there is more good news: we did make our Academic Progress Index goal! In fact, on this State measure, we grew 17 points to an all-time Emerson high of 788. But, in the big picture, the API measure is not what we are aiming for. We want to make our federal targets-the AYP.
So, yes, in the big picture, Emerson has entered "Program Improvement" like hundreds of other schools across the State. We are not happy about it and we are implementing a plan to "freeze" in our status by making huge academic growth this year. We desperately want more students (all students) to be successful. We are working on aggressive plans to meet all of our goals with every subgroup this year. I'll share more information with you about our plan in the days ahead. Hang on!
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