Addressing Program Improvement Status

As a result of national Adequate Yearly Progress measures, 4 of our schools and our district as a whole have been placed in "Program Improvement" status. To be labeled a PI school, a school may miss just one of 46 possible measures. Learning where our schools are falling short is a key way to focus on improving achievement. That's the good news. As a result of work that has been done by our Education Services Department, corrective actions are being developed. Tonight at our Board meeting, we are being asked to approve a Language Arts Intervention program, which will be implemented for 4th and 5th grades at our 2 PI elementary schools (Summerdale, Vinci Park) and for 6-8 grades at all three middle schools.

To put the Program Improvement designation into perspective, I want to repost what I wrote last September. It is important to keep in mind that our district has been making significant gains in achievement over the past six years. Our reaction to PI will allow us to make even greater strides in the years ahead. Here is my previous explanation of PI:

The Bush administration touted their educational legislation, called "No Child Left Behind." The plan had a laudable goal of ensuring that 100% of students will be proficient by 2014. This means that every student in every school, even those that are still learning English, such as new immigrants, or those who have special needs, must be proficient or a school is deemed failing.

In order to get there, California's standards for Adequate Yearly Progress require double digit gains every year. In September, Santa Clara County released county-wide STAR test results, showing continued growth by county students. Even during this trend, more schools are failing the federal Adequate Yearly Progress standard. The County Office of Education, in their press release, explained how unrealistic the goals are.

"Because the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 requires that 100 percent of students become proficient or better in math and English by the year 2014, schools now are expected to meet unprecedented double-digit improvement standards each year. A rapidly increasing number of schools and districts are unable to meet these growth marks, and therefore are placed in the Program Improvement category."

Charles Weis, the Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools explained that "the increase in the number of schools not making Adequate Yearly Progress this year might be misinterpreted as indicating that schools are performing worse. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, student scores are better than ever. However, we're at the stage now where unrealistic expectations for growth are outpacing our rate of improvement. Here's how unrealistic the national growth expectations are: There has never been an educational program that has resulted in double-digit growth each and every year. Not in this state, not in this country, not anywhere in the world."

More from SCCOE: "Weis cautioned that there could be unforeseen pitfalls to unrealistically high growth standards. "We don't want to misidentify schools as 'failing' when they have been improving," he said. "This might cause them to abandon successful methods, just because they haven't met unrealistic goals. Having high expectations is important. Having unrealistic expectations can be self-defeating." In the mass of detail that inevitably surrounds the release of the APR, Weis said it is important to remember some consistent trends: County students are doing better every year; all subgroups of students are improving, and the achievement gap is narrowing."

In Berryessa, overall district growth in the API last year was 6 points. 11 of 13 schools showed growth, 7 showed double digit growth, and 11 of 13 schools are above the state standard for exemplary. Of the remaining two, one is only 5 points shy and the other is 29 points short of exemplary status. Overall, what is even more impressive is that the district has shown this type of growth or more in each of the last six years!

Let's celebrate the achievements of Berryessa and all county schools over the past decade to make significant progress in student achievement. We will continue to focus on areas where we are still falling short. But let's also celebrate the achievements of our teachers, staff, and students in achieving tremendous growth during the past 6 years.