15 state schools failing
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| Thu, 10-14-2004 - 2:46pm |
Just 15 state schools failing
81 originally in danger of getting label
Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 14, 2004 12:00 AM
The state released rankings for 1,182 public schools Wednesday, including Arizona's first and surprisingly short list of failing schools.
The state will not announce the names of the schools in each category until Friday, but it reported that only 15 will receive a failing label. The small number comes as a surprise because 81 Arizona schools were in danger of falling into the bottom category. If they received an underperforming rank for a third year, they would be classified as failing, pending a site visit by the state.
Failing schools face a range of intervention by the state, including replacing principals and teachers.
Not only did the small number of failing schools come as a surprise, but the number of schools ranked underperforming also dropped from last year's 136 to just 30 this year. The rest of the state's schools were ranked as excelling, 130; highly performing, 188; and performing, 819.
The state labels a school using a complex formula based on its three-year average of Stanford 9 and AIMS student test scores. The formula includes attendance at elementary schools and dropout and graduation rates at high schools.
Last year, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne pushed through a more lenient formula that helped more schools reach the higher rankings. Horne calls the changes "correcting injustices" in the old formula.
He said it is no accident that the number of underperforming and failing schools declined.
Beginning last school year, lagging schools, particularly the 81 teetering on a "failing" rank, received special attention from state officials aimed at improving student achievement. Horne organized teams of educators, including retired and active principals, teachers and college professors, and sent them out to help underperforming schools retrain their teachers and get their lesson plans in line with state learning goals. He credits their efforts for turning around so many schools.
"The decline in the number of underperforming and surprisingly low number of failing schools is also a tribute to the efforts the schools themselves have made," Horne said.
It also is a welcome relief. By law, the state must intervene in failing schools and, in extreme cases, replace the school's staff. It's expensive and politically unpopular.
"By focusing our efforts on a relatively small number of schools, we can do a much better job and set a much better foundation for future years' efforts," Horne said.
Before the end of the year, the number of Arizona's failing schools could drop even lower. Each of the 15 schools with a failing label can appeal. The state will send to each failing school a visiting representative, who will examine lesson plans, teacher training and test data. Based on that report, Horne could recommend to the Arizona State Board of Education that a school be removed from the failing category. The board will have the final say about which schools stay on the list.
For the schools that remain failing, the state has outlined three levels of intervention into each school's day-to-day operations and will attempt to customize intervention for each school's needs.
Some failing schools may be regularly monitored by state officials, while others could be required to make drastic changes in curriculum, teaching and training. The most dramatic level of intervention allows the state to take over a school, which would mean replacing the principal and bringing in new teachers who would be assigned to raise performance within three years. That could happen as early as summer 2005.
The districts would be required to pay for the new principal and teachers and make room in the district for the replaced principal and teachers.
Retired Intel executive Matthew Diethelm, vice president of the Arizona State Board of Education, said he is neither surprised nor relieved that the state has 15 failing schools.
"The key thing is that the schools are doing the things they need to do to improve," Diethelm said.
Susan Carlson is a former kindergarten teacher and now executive director for the Arizona Business & Education Coalition, a group of business and education leaders working to find common ground and build political power to improve schools.
To rank a school, with its students and teachers, as failing is tough, Carlson said, but it's a big part of pushing teachers, parents and community members to take responsibility for children learning.
"On the other hand, we also know the enormous effort it takes - and will take - to ensure all students are a success," Carlson said. "Arizona cannot walk away from that challenge."
