Several Valley schools miss progress targets

MAT-SU — Three of the Mat-Su Borough School District’s four major high schools failed to make adequate yearly progress for the 2007-2008 school year, according to figures released Friday by the state Department of Education and Early Development.

Adequate yearly progress (AYP) is a measuring tool used by the federal No Child Left Behind Act to keep tabs on education in public schools. In the Mat-Su, Wasilla, Palmer and Houston high schools all failed to make AYP, the state reports.

Colony High School, which failed to make AYP for the 2006-2007 school year, was the only major high school in the Valley to make adequate yearly progress, the report shows. First-year school Mat-Su Career and Technical High School also made AYP, along with Su Valley High School, which burned down in June 2007 and forced students into portable classrooms.

The number of schools making AYP according to No Child Left Behind is down across the state this year, the state reports. Overall, 294 of 501 schools measured using the AYP method made the cut. That’s a decline from the previous school year, with the percent of schools making AYP in 2007-2008 falling from 62 percent to 59.7 percent.

Department of Education officials report the AYP data should be looked at with a mind toward higher proficiency standards that began with the 2007-2008 school year.

“It is important to note that many schools that did not make the adequate yearly progress this year due to the higher targets did show improvement over the previous year,” state Education Commissioner Larry LeDoux said. In Alaska, students in grades three through 10 must take state assessments in reading, writing and math to meet the requirements of President George W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

Speaking to the decline in AYP achieving schools this year, Les Morse, the director of Assessment, Accountability and Information Management at the Department of Education, said the state expects the number of schools making AYP to temporarily decrease whenever there is an increase in proficiency standards.

But failing to make AYP can carry consequences for school districts. For Title 1 schools, which are schools receiving federal anti-poverty funds, the consequences range from offering parents a choice of schools and funding tutoring for low-income students, to restructuring a school’s governance, according to the Department of Education. None of the high schools failing to make AYP in the Valley are designated Title 1.

Look for more on what local schools are doing to improve AYP in the Valley in Tuesday’s Frontiersman.