Schools Making the Grade in Adequate Yearly Progress (PA)

September 23, 2010

The good news when it comes to scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment in Allegheny County’s 42 suburban school districts is that an overwhelming number are meeting the federal standard for Adequate Yearly Progress.

The bad news is the handful of districts that are struggling face daunting challenges in moving their students toward the No Child Left Behind mandate that all students be at least proficient by 2014.

Statewide, 82 percent of districts made AYP on the tests that were given in the spring of this year, according to results released last week. In Allegheny County, the number was even higher — 88 percent. With Pittsburgh Public Schools added to the 42 suburban districts for a total of 43 districts, 38 attained AYP. Those that did not make AYP were Pittsburgh Public Schools, Penn Hills, Sto-Rox, Wilkinsburg and Woodland Hills.

Outside of Allegheny County, all school districts in Armstrong, Butler, Westmoreland and Washington counties made AYP. In Beaver County, Aliquippa School District landed in the warning category.

McKeesport Area School District, which did not make AYP last year, hit its targets this year and received a "making progress" designation. Districts must meet their targets for two consecutive years to attain AYP.

In addition, while the Duquesne School District achieved AYP based on improved scores among its high school students who attend East Allegheny and West Mifflin high schools, the Duquesne Elementary/Middle School, did not make AYP, saw a substantial drop in scores and did not hit any of its academic targets.

Of the 38 Allegheny County districts that hit their targets for AYP, 11 had one or more schools that did not. Among those were these high schools: Baldwin, Bethel Park, Clairton, Keystone Oaks, McKeesport Area, Northgate, Shaler Area and West Mifflin Area. In most cases, the schools missed a single target such as scores in a subgroup, for example, special education or economically disadvantaged students, or in test participation. Although in Clairton, a number of academic targets were missed in addition to a test participation target.

The challenge for all districts will be greater in 2011.

This year, the target for districts was for 63 percent of students to score proficient or above in reading and 56 percent in math, although districts and schools could make AYP through a variety of alternative methods based on their progress. In the tests that will be given in the spring of 2011, those targets jump to 72 percent in reading and 67 percent in math.

"It’s our job now to get strategies together to make this happen," Wilkinsburg superintendent Archie Perrin said.

If schools miss AYP, they can face sanctions, such as being required to offer school choice within the district or tutoring, plus other consequences.

The scores continue to reflect the trend of affluent districts performing well and economically disadvantaged districts struggling with their proficiency rates.

Racial gap

At Penn Hills High School, white students scored 34 percentage points higher than black students in reading and nearly 31 percentage points higher in math. At McKeesport Area High School, white students scored about 35 percentage points higher than black students in re ading and math.

At Woodland Hills High School, the percentage point difference between the groups was 29 in reading and 24 in math. At Sto-Rox High school, the difference was 22 and 21.

The racial gap is evident at the elementary level in the Steel Valley School District, where Barrett Elementary, a predominately black school in Homestead, did not make AYP and its students performed well below their counterparts at the predominately white Park Elementary in Munhall.

District officials, however, say they see the discrepancy as more of an economic gap than a racial gap because more than 95 percent of Barrett students are economically disadvantaged while about 37 percent of Park students fall into that category.

At Barrett, 31.1 percent of students overall scored proficient or above in reading, a drop of 15.1 percentage points from 2009. In math, 58.3 percent of students overall scored proficient or above, a 5 percentage point drop.

In contrast, at Park, 75.1 percent of students overall scored proficient or above in reading and 89.1 percent of students overall scored proficient or above in math.

Ed Colebank, Steel Valley’s director of academics, said the district is aware of the achievement gap and has for the past several years "gone out of our way to mirror the academic structure" at Park and Barrett. The difference between the two schools is "more households are involved at Park than at Barrett," he said, and the student population at Barrett is more transient.

Changes being made for the 2010-11 school year are to streamline the math, reading and writing curricula and give those subjects precedence over others at the elementary level and to develop individual study plans for each student based on the student’s performances on interim assessments and staff observations.

Officials in other districts are grappling with how to improve scores among minorities and those who are economically disadvantaged.

"We continue to look for reasons for that discrepancy," Sto-Rox superintendent Fran Serenka said. "There is no good reason to have that kind of gap. All of our students receive the same curriculum."

One school that has consistently bucked that trend is Propel McKeesport charter school, where 85 percent of the students qualify for free lunches and 73 percent are minorities. Yet, the school’s scores met and sometimes exceeded those of affluent districts.

At Propel McKeesport, 83.9 percent of students overall scored proficient or above in reading and 96.8 percent did so in math. In the subgroups, there was little difference between the performance of white and black students.

In math, 100 percent of white students and 95.2 percent of black students scored proficient or above. In reading, 87.3 percent of the white students scored proficient or above as did 80 percent of the black students.

While Propel’s other schools — Propel East, Propel Homestead and Propel Montour — made AYP, they did not have the stunning results of the McKeesport school.

A continuing frustration for district administrators is the label that is placed on their districts by the annual set of scores assigned to them by the PSSA exams. They say the scores don’t necessarily reflect the abilities and efforts of their students and staff.

"The thing that frustrat es us is that we refuse to be labeled by that one number," McKeesport Area superintendent Timothy Gabauer said.

PSSA scores for individual districts can be viewed at paayp.emetric.net.

Here is a closer look at the four Allegheny County suburban districts that failed to make AYP in 2010.

Duquesne

In Duquesne, the number of high school students overall who scored proficient or above in reading increased by 13.3 percentage points to 38.3 percent of students. In math, it increased 14.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent. Even with the improvements, those numbers are far below the state target.

In Duquesne Elementary/Middle School, referred to by the state as Duquesne Consolidated School, the number of students scoring proficient or above in reading dropped in all groups and grades tested. In math, the number dropped in all grades and subgroups but increased by 0.1 percent in students overall in grades three through five.

For students overall in grades three through five at Duquesne, 13.7 percent scored proficient or above in reading, which was 13.8 percentage points lower than last year.

For students overall in grades six through eight, 19.4 percent scored proficient or above in reading — a 9.5 percentage drop from last year — and 20.6 percent in math, a 6.5 percentage point drop from last year.

Principal Davaun Barnett said he was not completely surprised by the scores because the district implemented the Success For All program during the 2009-10 school year for the first time. He said scores often drop during the first year a new program is implemented. In addition, he said, district officials focused so intently on that program, they set aside other state-recommended measures.

This school year, he said, the district will be back on track with both the Success for All strategies and the state-recommended ones. Also, he said, last school year, students received a 90-minute daily reading block that was part of the Success for All program. This school year, they also will receive another 60 minutes of basic reading instruction.

Penn Hills

After achieving AYP in 2009, the Penn Hills School District failed to make it this year.

Three of the district’s schools failed to attain AYP — Penn Hebron Elementary Academy, Washington Elementary School and Penn Hills Senior High School.

It is the second consecutive year the high school did not make AYP even though it saw increases in both math and reading scores by most groups. Students in the special education subgroup did not hit the target in reading.

The same problem exists at Penn Hebron Elementary, where the school missed its target on reading scores for the special education subgroup. Scores for other groups at Penn Hebron, however, did not increase the way they did at the high school.

The most severe issue in the Penn Hills district appeared to be at Washington Elementary School, where significant decreases occurred in the reading scores across all groups, including a drop of 18.7 percentage points among students overall and a 24.5 percentage point decrease among African-American students.

Penn Hills officials were not available for comment.

Sto-Rox

This marks the second year Sto-Rox did not make AYP, nor did any of its three schools. Scores dropped across grade levels and subgroups, with the most troubling scores at the high school, where none of the targets were reached for reading and only one subgroup — white students — reached the target for math.

"Our reading scores are troubling to us, but our math scores in K-8 are good," Dr. Serenka said.

"Our high school scores were particularly disappointing because we had been one of the top 50 schools to show progress for the past six years," she said.

She said she believes the poor scores at the high school are directly related to the fact that support staff who operated literacy and math labs were cut because of budget shortfalls for the 2009-10 school year.

Those labs were where students could spend time working on the weaknesses in their critical skills in addition to their classroom time. For the 2010-11 school year, Dr. Serenka said, the high school has a literacy coach, a position that was made possible because of the retirement of a social studies teacher.

But, Dr. Serenka said, her district must find a way to move forward with fewer resources. "We are going to have to do more with less and do it with great strength and resiliency," she said.

Wilkinsburg

Like Sto-Rox, Wilkinsburg failed to make AYP for the second year, and it, too, saw scores drop across grade levels and subgroups. The most disappointing scores were at the high school, where none of the academic targets were met.

At the high school, 16.9 percent of students scored proficient or above in reading, a 9.1 percentage point drop. In math, 15.6 percent of students s cored proficient or above, a 4.2 percentage point drop.

Mr. Perrin said he was "alarmed" at the high school results when he and his staff first saw them this summer, but the district has since moved to develop a plan of action. Three weeks ago, the district hired a literacy coach and assistant superintendent to help address the issues. In addition, motivational speakers will address teachers, students, parents and administrators.

At the high school, reading will be a focus across the curriculum. "Everybody takes English, but children should be reading and writing in social studies and science class as well," Mr. Perrin said.

Also at the high school, students will continue this school year with their student improvement plans, which focus on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

In addition, the district will push for more parental involvement and make guidance counselors available during evening hours to meet with parents who work during the day.

Woodland Hills

At Woodland Hills School District, administrators were blindsided by the PSSA results at the high school, curriculum coordinator Norman Catalano said, because interim assessments showed students making good progress on math and reading skills.

Mr. Catalano said interim testing showed that about 69 percent of the high school students were scoring proficient or above in reading, but the actual PSSA score was 59. In math, the interim assessments indicated that 61 percent of students were scoring proficient or above, but the PSSA score was 46.

The district has added a math coach at the junior high level and realigned the curriculum at t he senior high level.

In addition, he said, the district needs to address the way it is educating special education students because it missed the targets in the special education subgroup at every level.