Know Your Audience

I got testy at the Special Ed Advisory Committee meeting last night.

First of all, the topic changed at the last minute from Before and After School Activities to Adequate Yearly Progress. I've been all over AYP, including watching the school board meeting where the results were discussed and noting the comment that Students with Disabilities "only" need to improve from a 76% to a 79% pass rate in reading next year to achieve safe harbor and make AYP for the district. The reading target last year for all students was 81%, and the reading target next year for all students is 89%.

Now I really like attending the SEAC meetings; I've learned an awful lot on a variety of topics including Precision Teaching, Differentiation of Instruction and Behavior Intervention Plans. It makes me a better parent and a better IEP team member. It also helped me to be a more effective SEAC PTA representative last year. But did someone expect me to forgot all of that and sit there and play nice?

Last night's presenter was Dr. Stephan Knobloch, Director of Research. I have no doubt that he knows these numbers inside and out. But when you are making a presentation to the parents of the lowest achieving subgroup in the district, you need to modify your remarks from what you would say to the school board. No child left behind is specifically our child - our son or daughter.

To me, when you have a 76% pass rate in reading, that means that almost 25% of students with disabilities are unable to demonstrate that they can read on grade level. Every other subgroup, including those with limited English and the disadvantaged, hit the target of a 81% pass rate. What is going on? And how, specifically, are you going to improve the performance of these students? I've learned how you can do this, but when are you actually going to do it? Or does it not matter unless and until we don't hit our mile marker? We have about 6,000 students with disabilities and a little over half of them took a reading SOL last year - that means that there are about 800 disabled students who failed the reading SOL. Most of these 800 students live with a parent who can read and with at least one sibling who can read.

Teach all of our children to read! You know, use precision teaching, differentiation, Stetson and a well formulated and implemented IEP. You have the tools, and you have gone to pains to let us know that you have the tools - use them!

Before We Move On...AYP Results

The Loudoun County School Board has a very full plate this school year, but I don't want to forget what the Commonwealth of Virginia expects of LCPS this year. Here are the Annual Yearly Progress charts that were recently presented to the board:

AYP Progress Safe Harbor

The reading scores are for all students in grades 3 - 8 and grade 11.
The math scores are for all students in grades 3 - 11 or until they have taken 3 high school level math courses (they could be in 9th or 10th grade - tests end with Algebra II).

The students who were in 3rd grade in 2004/05, were in 8th grade in 2009/10.

The reading scores are pretty easy to understand, but without more information it is difficult to interpret the math scores. Clearly math scores went down in all groups in 2005/06 and did not completely rebound until 2007/08.

On the reading chart:

• Black and Hispanic students started out at the same level (71%) in 2004/05, took different paths, but ended up at the same level (85%) five years later.

• Black students have demonstrated no improvement for three years.

• Limited English students and Students with Disabilities started very close together, but Students with Disabilities are now lagging behind all other groups and are still scoring in the 70's. This is disheartening as disabled students who cannot perform at the grade level of their peers have had alternative tests available to indicate their improvement.

To put it another way, 24% of disabled students who are expected to read at grade level are unable to indicate that they can do so.

There is a whole lot of information not available from these charts. There are two questions that are uppermost in my mind:

• How many children fall into more than one of the non-white subgroups; specifically how many disabled students are in each of the other groups?

• How are disabled students performing by disability group; is there a particular disability that is either over or under-performing?

The gaps between non-white sub-groups have narrowed, as have the gaps between white students and all of the other sub-groups.

I'm wondering if this chart makes the case for the legitimacy of No Child Left Behind. Would school districts have made a concerted effort to raise the reading scores of poor, minority and disabled students by 15 to 20 percentage points if it hadn't been mandated by law?