Some lagging schools are making massive leaps toward 100 percent proficiency on the Maryland School Assessment.
With the federal deadline halfway here, those schools are beginning to focus help on the students who need it most while separating out other students who are doing well. That strategy rebuts a usual criticism of No Child Left Behind ? which requires every student to earn a proficient score in reading and math by 2014 ? by boosting struggling students? scores while allowing advanced students to continue progressing.
Eastport Elementary School in Annapolis, for instance, nearly doubled the percentage of students testing proficient in reading, from about 47 percent last year to nearly 88 percent this year.
“When you have a score in the 40s, you have to make adjustments,” said Lynne Evans, who has been the principal of Eastport Elementary for five years. “We looked at individual data for the students, and focused our intervention on whatthey needed.”
Failure to meet adequate yearly progress each year ? benchmarks that rise annually ? can result in parents moving their children to other schools, takeover by a private company or the replacement of all teachers and administrators at the school.
Magnolia Elementary in Joppa had failed to meet adequate yearly progress the first four years of No Child Left Behind, from 2003 through 2006.
The school met adequate yearly progress last year, and its scores continued to jump higher this year, with proficient reading scores increasing about 13 percentage points, to nearly 82 percent, and math scores going up about 8 percentage points, to nearly 83 percent.
Teachers pulled out students who were falling behind in reading so they could learn together, and a gifted-and-talented teacher who usually taught advanced students separately helped during regular classes, said Don Morrison, spokesman for the school system.
The schools? plan to focus more on those in need is similar to the state?s.
Maryland became one of six states recently to win approval from the federal government so it can label schools “focused” that are generally performing well but failing to meet No Child Left Behind standards with only a small section of their student populations, such as students who are learning the English language.
