Eleven Springdale Schools On Improvement List
Students Performing Well On Benchmark Exams
Last updated Friday, October 31, 2008 9:07 PM CDT in News
By Rose Ann Pearce
THE MORNING NEWS
SPRINGDALE -- The not-so-good news is nearly half of Springdale's 24 schools made the state school improvement list but the better news is most students in the district's schools are performing well on the state Benchmark exams.
District officials said Friday they will continue to push professional development, before and after school tutoring programs, summer programs and helping parents learn English.
They also will continue a stronger focus on enrichment programs as well, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate.
"We have many achieving students," said Marsha Jones, the assistant superintendent for elementary curriculum and instruction. "We have a small pocket of students who aren't."
The improvement list is a compilation of schools which didn't make adequate yearly progress on the 2008 tests under No Child Left Behind. A total of 375 of Arkansas' 1,087 schools were on the list released Friday.
Holt Middle School was the only school in Fayetteville on the list. It remains in its first year of school improvement even though the test scores met state standards in all 14 categories. The school must meet standards two years in a row to be removed from the list.
West Fork and Greenland are the only districts in Washington County with no schools on the list.
In Springdale, Elmdale Elementary School, Hellstern Middle School and George Junior High School are still on the list even though the schools met standards this year. They will be removed if they meet standards again next spring.
Monitor, Walker and Young elementary schools and Har-Ber High School are on alert, meaning they failed to meet standards and will go on the improvement list if they fail to meet standards next year.
Lee, Westwood and George elementary schools are on the improvement list, in large part because of those students who have not yet acquired sufficient English language to pass an exam given in English, Jones said.
At the secondary level, Springdale High School, Central and Southwest junior highs and Kelly and Tyson middle school are on the list.
Don Love, the assistant superintendent for secondary curriculum and instruction, said the five schools failed to make adequate yearly progress because of performance of subgroups.
The subgroups are students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, Hispanic students and students with limited English proficiency.
More than one-third of Arkansas schools are considered in need of improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the state Department of Education said Friday.
The list of schools in the state categorized as in "school improvement" rose to 375 this year, an increase of 50 over the previous year. Arkansas has 1,087 public schools.
Schools are placed on the school improvement list if they fail to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years. In order to achieve adequate yearly progress this year, Arkansas schools had to have between 46.63 percent and 55 percent of students, depending on grade and test, scoring proficient or above on Benchmark exams.
"The probability is very high that the number of schools placed on the list of schools in need of improvement will increase each year because the bar gets higher each year," said state Education Commissioner Ken James.
No Child Left Behind mandates all students in the nation to be at the proficient level by 2013-2014. The marks must be hit by the test-taking student body as a whole and also with individual subgroups in literacy and math.
Of the schools on the list this year, 82 achieved adequate yearly progress in the 2007-08 school year. Schools must achieve adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years to be removed from the school improvement list.
"We have to play with the hand we're dealt," Jones said. "At the elementary level, all of the schools show growth across the vast majority (of students). As we see the bar rise, we'll always be playing catch up."
At a Glance
Schools In Need Of Improvement
Washington County schools on the state list of schools in need of improvement include:
• Elkins: Elkins Elementary and Elkins Elementary Primary schools
• Farmington: Randall G. Lynch Middle School
• Fayetteville: Holt Middle School (met standards)
• Lincoln: Lincoln Elementary School
• Prairie Grove: Prairie Grove Middle School
• Springdale: Elmdale Elementary School (met standards); George Elementary School, Lee Elementary School, Westwood Elementary School, J.O. Kelly Middle School, Helen Tyson Middle School, Hellstern Middle School (met standards), George Junior High School (met standards), Central Junior High School, Southwest Junior High School, Springdale High School
Source: Staff Report
Reader Comments (15 comment(s))
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madpotato wrote on Nov 1, 2008 7:32 AM:
Consider these points on the tragedy that has become our school system: Free lunches are given without question to all Hispanic students (even in the summer), school supplies are confiscated from all students at the start of the year and distributed to Hispanic students which did not contribute, money which is supposed to be spent on actual students is spent to teach parents English, and most concerning of all is the fact that the schools have now asked for health insurance information for all students (per notes sent home with parents). This is the first step in making sure children of illegals can get set up with Medicare thus basically providing free healthcare.
The school board and entire administration needs to be replaced. It will be hard to do as Rollins has literally hand picked every member of the board. However, do you want this type of incompetence and political correctness running our city? Its bad enough already without adding more school board influence to the mix. "
ozarks wrote on Nov 1, 2008 7:46 AM:
brneyedgirl821 wrote on Nov 1, 2008 8:11 AM:
brneyedgirl821 wrote on Nov 1, 2008 8:17 AM:
ironfortified wrote on Nov 1, 2008 8:32 AM:
Slystephy wrote on Nov 1, 2008 10:35 AM:
Weenie wrote on Nov 1, 2008 12:49 PM:
brneyedgirl821 wrote on Nov 1, 2008 1:07 PM:
sovereignty wrote on Nov 1, 2008 1:31 PM:
commonsense2 wrote on Nov 1, 2008 2:09 PM:
tk wrote on Nov 1, 2008 2:44 PM:
It harms the children on the low end of the learning curve. If a child is not working at grade level, they are not allowed to hold him/her back a year, so no wonder some children are falling behind. They are never allowed to catch up.
It harms the children on the high end of the learning curve. I have seen the gifted and talented program decline over the past few years. There isn't even a GT staff member for each school. My child's GT teacher is only at her school one afternoon each week.
It certainly doesn't do much for the children in the center of the learning curve either, the schools are forced to "teach to the test", preparing the students to do their very best on the benchmark testing. Then once the testing is done, students and teachers are totally burnt out and very little learning happens post-testing.
Springdale's School District staff is doing as good a job as they can with all this. But it seems to me that not only are the children being left behind by "No Child Left Behind" but entire schools are being left behind by the policy, specifically because of all this name calling and blame-storming. "
nwacitizen wrote on Nov 1, 2008 5:34 PM:
springdalegirl69 wrote on Nov 2, 2008 9:43 AM:
Not already registered?
lifer66 wrote on Nov 1, 2008 2:42 AM: