Utah releases No Child Left Behind school scores

Over bagels and orange juice, teachers at Hillsdale Elementary School in West Valley City learned the good news Tuesday morning.

"We made AYP!" Principal Yvonne Pearson announced as she unfurled a congratulatory banner and teachers cheered. "I want to say thank you so much."

Like Hillsdale, 87 percent of Utah schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the goals of No Child Left Behind, a federal education law, the Utah Office of Education announced Wednesday. That's up from 80 percent of Utah schools last year. To make AYP each year, schools must make sure certain percentages of their students test on-grade level in math and reading in each of many ethnic, ability and income groups. The idea behind No Child Left Behind is that those percentages must increase over time until 100 percent of students test on-grade level in 2014.

Schools that don't meet yearly goals but accept federal money for serving low-income students face sanctions such as having to bus students to better-performing schools or replacing staff, depending on how long a school fails to make AYP.

More Utah schools this year made AYP despite -- or maybe because of -- different targets. For example, in order to make AYP this year, more students -- 83 percent in elementary schools and 82 percent in high schools -- at each school had to test on-grade level in language arts than the year before. In math, however, fewer students had to test on-grade level than in previous

years. This past school year, only 40 percent of high school students had to test on-grade level and only 45 percent of elementary and middle school students had to test on-grade level in order for a school to make AYP. The state, with federal permission, lowered those goals this year to give schools wiggle room to work with a new state math curriculum and new math test.

Clyde Mason, director of accountability and program services for the Jordan School District, called the lowering of the math goals "reasonable." This year, 37 of the district's 47 schools made AYP compared with 24 the year before.

"It obviously was a significant factor," Mason said of the lower math goals.

Still, schools across the state largely celebrated the release this week.

East Midvale Elementary School, for example, held a picnic party late last week to celebrate making AYP this year after failing to make it the year before.

Principal Sally Sansom said the school improved by using strategies such as professional learning communities, where teams of teachers met once a week to discuss data and children who needed help. Students were also given regular assessments to make sure they were on track to meet goals.

Richard Mellor, a sixth-grade teacher at East Midvale, said he feels a sense of accomplishment as an educator.

"It's definitely not a fluke," Mellor said. "It's the result of hard work."

Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the state, at least one school is celebrating a "monumental" victory, said Jeff Morris, assistant principal at Eagle View Elementary School in Roosevelt.

Some considered Eagle View Elementary, which replaced West Middle School, to be the worst school in the state. West, which sat near the heart of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, failed to make AYP for seven years and was the first and, so far, only school in the state to close and be restructured under No Child Left Behind.

But this year, Eagle View Elementary made AYP. The school did it by replacing or reassigning about two-thirds of the staff, moving the entire K-8 school onto an elementary schedule, meaning students in all grades spend most of the day in one classroom with one teacher, and the Ute Indian Tribe created and enforced a new truancy policy.

"A lot of people came together with the same vision to make things better," said Principal Robert Stearmer. "These are children that if you have faith in them, they can do it."

Stearmer said he doesn't agree with all of NCLB, but it held the school accountable.

"When you finally want to get change done, sometimes you have to create a sense of urgency in people and that's what No Child Left Behind did," he said. "It's a shame it had to get to that point, but that sense of urgency had to be created somehow."

The state on Wednesday also released results for U-PASS, the state's accountability system.

Under U-PASS, 91 percent of Utah elementary and middle schools met state goals, up from 85 percent in 2008. And among high schools, 84 percent of schools met the goals, down from 94 percent in 2008.

Under U-PASS, elementary and middle schools must make sure 77 percent of their students test on-grade level in language arts, math and science, and high schools must make sure 72 percent of students test on-grade level. Or, schools can show they're making progress toward those goals to pass under U-PASS.

Also, unlike AYP, U-PASS doesn't require schools to make sure students in each ethnic, ability and income group meet the goals. Instead, all those groups are put together and must meet the goals as a whole. Also, schools don't face specific sanctions for failing to meet U-PASS goals.