Schools meet AYP standard

Whitefish schools are meeting federal

standards for a quality education.

Muldown Elementary, the middle school

and high school all met Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child

Left Behind act. Schools are required to meet benchmarks to meet

AYP, which is calculated based in-part on testing.

“Overall our scores are outstanding,”

Special Services Director Dave Means said. “We always want our kids

to improve and we’re excited that the results show they are.”

Means gave a presentation on the

district’s AYP status to the School Board Sept. 13.

At Muldown, 94 percent of students were

proficient in reading and 82 percent were proficient in math. At

the middle school, 94 percent are proficient in reading and 80

percent in math.

While each school met the standard, the

whole elementary district, kindergarten through eighth grade, did

not. Students in the elementary district were 94 percent proficient

in reading and 80 percent proficient in math.

The reason they failed to meet AYP

comes down to the number of students in the disability and economic

disadvantage subgroups, according to Means.

Students in the disabled and

economically subgroups in the elementary district did not make

adequate yearly progress therefore disqualifying the elementary

district. In both subgroups the district could have met AYP

standards had one or two students scored higher.

“There is so few students in the

subgroup, one or two students makes the difference (between making

AYP and not),” he said.

The elementary district is showing

progress with those students, however, because the number of

non-proficient students decreased over the last testing.

“We are increasing the skills of these

students,” Means said.

Because the elementary district did not

make AYP, a few areas will receive greater attention to improve

scores. Those include after school tutoring, professional

development and mentoring programs for new teachers.

“We take this very seriously,” Means

said. “We have high expectations for all students.”

At the high school, 98 percent of

students are proficient in reading and 72 percent are proficient in

math.

One benchmark the high school did not

make was it’s graduation rate.

Whitefish’s graduation rate was 79

percent, while NCLB sets a target rate of 85 percent.

Under NCLB, graduation is tracked over

a four-year period of attendance.

“We have many students that move,”

Means said. “If we don’t know where they are then we have to report

them as dropped out. We do our best to try to track those students

down.”

Three-fourths of Montana’s schools met

progress goals under NCLB this year. Eighty-five percent of Montana

students tested proficient in reading and 69 percent for math.