JYMS plans to catch up: Students with disabilities lagged
By Tim Damos / News Republic
For the first time a school in the Baraboo district has fallen short of federal No Child Left Behind standards. Baraboo School District officials received a letter from the state Department of Public Instruction May 15 notifying them that Jack Young Middle School (JYMS) was one of 147 schools statewide that did not make "adequate yearly progress" in 2008-2009. The school fell short because a subgroup of students — those with disabilities — did not meet
Just more than 90 of the 600-plus students at Jack Young Middle School are classified as disabled.
"Part of the reason scores go up and down for that group is that when you look at students that are defined as having a disability, you are looking at a range of students that have anything from a minor health impairment to a severe cognitive disability," said Lynee Tourdot, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction.
Under state and federal guidelines, 74 percent of students must test at advanced or proficient levels in reading and 58 percent must meet that standard in math on two statewide tests — the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam and the Wisconsin Alternate Assessment for Students with Disabilities.
Those benchmarks are raised every few years, and will climb to 100 percent by 2014.
For a school to make "adequate yearly progress," disabled students at each of its grade levels must meet the 74 percent reading benchmark. Disabled students at Jack Young Middle School did not.
But as a whole, students in the district met qualifications and the district does not face sanctions, Tourdot said. The school was not one of 79 statewide that were "identified for improvement," a classification set aside for schools that miss benchmarks in two consecutive years.
"It’s something we’re looking at it, and it’s something we take really seriously," said school board member Judd Maxwell.
Tourdot would not say what percentage of disabled Jack Young Middle School students met proficiency standards and would not provide documents showing that data. The release of that information could allow people to match up test results with individual students in small subgroups, Tourdot said.
In internal meetings Tuesday, district staff began discussing how to address the No Child Left Behind findings.
"We talked about the need for every teacher to consider themselves a reading and language teacher, not just ones in the English classroom," said Scott Miller, who took over as Jack Young’s principal this week.
Miller also stressed that the state data only highlights the results of one test on a certain day.
He said the district strives to see continual improvements in each student, and has other testing methods to measure that. But he said because some students with disabilities have severe mental delays, it may be unrealistic for the district to reach the 100 percent advanced and proficient level in that category.
"I think it’s no more realistic than expecting all of us to put together a small engine," Miller said.
There are eight special education teachers at Jack Young Middle School who specialize in assisting a range of disabilities, said Tim Fosshage, director of special education and pupil services for the district.
He said the district has a variety of methods in place to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each disabled student, and those children are placed on individual programs of varying intensity.
Fosshage said the state’s exams focus on a child’s ability to make inferences or "read between the lines," rather than simply digesting what they read in text.
He said that seems to be an issue with some students, and staff will develop a unified approach to addressing the issue.
"These aren’t unknown students. We know who they are, we know what they’re struggling with and we need to have a targeted and collaborative approach to help them improve," Fosshage said.
Though the district was notified of the middle school’s classification in May, the information was embargoed until June 8, so it was not provided at the June 9 school board meeting, said District Administrator Crystal Ritzenthaler.
She said the board will discuss the No Child Left Behind results, as well as other testing data, at its July 13 meeting.
Educators are increasingly discontented with the testing format required by the No Child Left Behind law, which takes a one-time snapshot of students’ skills instead of measuring the progress they might make year to year. State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster noted in a statement that her agency "continues to work with national and congressional leaders to promote changes" in the law.
WKCE test results have also revealed a widening gap between well-to-do students and ones from poor families in the Baraboo district, and officials have said they are working to address that issue as well.
Gayle Worland of the Wisconsin State Journal contributed to this report.