Plano ISD misses federal school benchmarks

by Bill Conrad of Star Local News

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However, the calculation for meeting No Child Left Behind has changed, resulting in the failure.

Plano ISD has failed to meet federal benchmarks created by the No Child Left Behind Act, the first time the district has done so.

The district missed the Adequate Yearly Progress marks for both reading and mathematics. Of the four major school districts in Collin County, only Frisco ISD met the standard in both subjects. Allen ISD came up short in mathematics, while McKinney ISD missed the mark in reading.

Even with its failure to meet the AYP standards, the district still received a recognized rating from the Texas Education Agency.

At Tuesday night's school board meeting, Jim Hirsch, the district's associate superintendent for academic and technology services, said it was tough to draw conclusions from one year to the next since the standards are always changing.

A district's AYP is based on several factors, including the percentage of all students who pass the reading and math sections of the TAKS test. For the 2009-2010 school year, 73 percent of the students tested had to pass the reading portion, while 67 percent had to pass math. For 2010-2011, those marks went up to 80 percent in reading and 75 percent in math.

One of the major changes in the way AYP was calculated was the elimination of the Texas Projection Measure, which counted students as passing if the school could show they were on track to pass the following year. The measure was highly controversial and TEA Education Commissioner Robert Scott eliminated its use in April 2011.

Dr. Dash Weerasinghe, the district's executive director of assessment and accountability, said the elimination of the growth measure hurt the district.

"One of the goals of AYP is that by 2014, 100 percent of students will be proficient or showing growth toward proficiency," he told the board. "This school year Texas unfortunately took away the growth part of the system and evaluated it purely on proficiency."

For 2010-2011, 55 of the district's campuses met their AYP, while nine missed. Of the schools that missed, four were elementary schools (Huffman, Dooley, Christie and Memorial), two were middle schools (Renner and Wilson) and three were high schools (Williams, Clark and Shepton).

Even though the district didn't meet its AYP, it still has made huge strides in student performance in the TAKS test since 2003.

Some of the largest improvements have come from economically disadvantaged students. In 2003, only 34 percent of these students passed the science portion of the test -- which is not included in the AYP calculations -- while 78 percent passed in 2011. The improvement in the math portion was also dramatic, going from 57 percent in 2003 to 83 percent last year.

From an ethnicity standpoint, the largest strides were made among African-American and Hispanic students, with both groups improving at least 36 percent in science and 20 percent in math.

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