Six more local schools get failing grades

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2003 | 11:27 a.m.

Six more Clark County schools have been found to need improvement for not showing the gains on standardized tests demanded by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, school officials learned Wednesday.

Craig, Herron, Park, and Tom Williams year-round elementary schools and Cambiero and Lunt, elementary schools with a modified nine-month schedule, brought the total number of schools not making adequate yearly progress two or more years to 18.

The schools with year-round and modified schedules give standardized tests later in the year than regular nine-month schools, so those results were only recently available.

The district expects to release next week a list of year-round schools that did not make enough progress for a first year and will be added to the watch list.

Earlier this month the district identified 82 campuses as not making adequate yearly progress for a first year, placing those campuses on a "watch list." A third of the district's 289 schools have now been identified as not making adequate progress for at least one year.

Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia said Wednesday the high number of schools that did not make adequate progress was close to what he and other educators had predicted.

The priority is to make sure the students who need extra assistance get it, Garcia said.

"The downside of No Child Left Behind is the punitive element, that schools are somehow being labeled and punished," Garcia said. "We need to put our energies into helping those schools get better, not beating them up."

The upside of the law is that the district has the most detailed data ever on how specific subgroups are performing, Garcia said. That can only help the district -- and its students -- in the long run, he said.

"Knowledge is power, and no one is going to argue with that," Garcia said.

Fourteen schools on the list did not show adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years -- Bracken, Cambiero, Craig, Herron, Kelly, Lunt, McCall, Park, Sunrise Acres, Wendell Williams and Tom Williams elementary schools, as well as Bridger, Von Tobel and West middle schools.

Four schools were identified as being in their third straight year of stagnant test scores -- Carson, Lynch, Ronnow and Tate elementary schools.

All of the schools identified are Title I schools, which means they receive a larger share of federal dollars based on the high number of students coming from low-income homes.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to meet achievement and participation benchmarks on standardized tests both schoolwide and by subgroups of students broken down by ethnicity, low income, non-native English speakers and special-education status. Schools that fail to make gains face sanctions, with the toughest penalties reserved for Title I schools.

Federal law requires districts to offer students at Title I schools that need improvement transfers to higher-achieving campuses. Students at schools identified for a third year are given vouchers to be spent on approved supplemental services, such as private tutoring or learning centers.

The district announced in August that nine schools appeared to have failed to make adequate improvement for at least two consecutive years.

Rather than wait for the appeals process to be completed, district officials opted to begin offering transfers immediately to minimize the disruption for parents, students and schools.

While more than 8,000 letters went out to parents, fewer than 250 students opted to transfer, said Mark Lange, director of Title I compliance for the district.

Under the law if schools fail to make enough progress for a fourth year the district must take corrective action, such as replacing key staff and bringing in outside consultants. A fifth year on list can result in a state takeover, the campus being converted to a charter school or having the operations turned over to a private management company.

School administrators appealed three of the designations -- Bracken, Herron and Tom Williams -- to the Nevada Department of Education without success, said Karlene McCormick-Lee, director of research and accountability for the district.

Herron Elementary fell short of the 95 percent participation rate now required under federal law, but met 90 percent participation rate that existed under state law at the time the exams were given, McCormick-Lee said. The "needing improvement" designation was upheld because the school also failed to show adequate progress for Hispanic students and students with limited English as well, McCormick-Lee said.

Four of the campuses -- Park, West, Lynch and Ronnow -- are managed for the district by Edison Schools Inc.