State testing rules bring failure

Last year, area school districts said they needed to focus their efforts on their high schools after most high schools failed to meet state standards.

This year, most area high schools still failed to get passing grades from the state, while several elementary schools joined them.

All five high schools in Elgin Area School District U-46, and all three high schools in Community Unit District 300 failed to meet state standards this year. Huntley High School in Huntley Unit District 158 was the one area high school that met standards.

District 158 did the best of the three districts. Every school in the district received a passing grade this year. But this year's success is no guarantee all schools will make the grade next year, when state standards will be higher.

Mary Olson, District 158's director of curriculum and instruction, said the size of this year's increases are encouraging.

"If we continue to have that kind of growth, we will make the cutoff at the high school," Olson said. "If we can just continue with that, we will be OK."

Nineteen of 40 Elgin Area School District U-46 elementary schools failed to meet state standards this year.

According to the federal No Child Left Behind Law, specific subgroups within a school, including low-income students, learning-disabled students and English-language learners must meet the rising standards on both the reading and math portions of state tests. Otherwise, the entire school fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress.

In all but one of the 19 failing schools, less than the required 62.5 percent of students learning English met standards in reading.

For the first time this year, the IMAGE (Illinois Measure of Annual Growth in English) test was eliminated for English-language learners, with the state now requiring those students to take the same tests as their peers. All third- through eighth-grade students are now required to take the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, and high school juniors must take the Prairie State Achievement Examination.

Twenty percent of U-46 students are English language learners. The state average is 7 percent.

"Meeting benchmarks by itself is a challenge," Superintendent Jose Torres said. "Adding in a different assessment for students (new to English) adds another complexity to the issue. How many of the 19 schools would have made the grade with a different test? We don't know."

Twelve of the 19 failing schools, including Channing, Garfield, Ontarioville, McKinley and Sheridan - also saw low-income students miss the mark in reading.

In all, about 65 percent of third-graders met standards in reading this year, compared to 70.8 percent last year.

In fourth and fifth grades, both grades scored at least a point below last year. Sixth- grade scores were up by five points.

At the middle-school level, reading scores improved in seventh grade by three points, but dropped by two in eighth.

Three of the district's middle schools - Canton, Kimball, and Larsen - also failed because of English-language learners' reading scores, while Abbott, Eastview, Ellis, Kenyon Woods and Tefft made AYP.

Both Abbott in Elgin and Tefft in Streamwood were removed from the state's academic watch list for improving two years in a row.

Math scores at both the elementary and middle schools remained above the state average.

At the high school level, 45 percent of high school students met state standards in reading this year, the same score as last year. In math, scores dropped one point, from 47 to 46 percent. The state average for both subjects was 53 percent.

This is the sixth year Elgin, Larkin, Streamwood and Bartlett high schools have failed to meet standards.

They face further state and federal sanctions this year as a result.

Torres said he intends to institute better measures to gauge how well students are doing, so state test scores don't come as a surprise. Those measures, he said, include aligning college readiness standards with Elgin Community College, and requiring a certain percentage of teachers to be certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

"It is what it is," Torres said of the district's scores this year. "I think we can do better."

In District 300, four elementary schools failed this year: Golfview, Meadowdale and Perry, all in Carpentersville, as well as Neubert in Algonquin.

All of the schools got passing grades last year.

Carpentersville Middle School, hailed as a success story when it passed last year after many years of getting failing grades, was unable to meet state standards again this year.

But most of District 300's schools, including Carpentersville Middle, Neubert, Jacobs High School and Hampshire High School, improved their scores this year.

Those four schools didn't meet state standards because the standards are raised every year.

If a school can't get its whole student body or a specific demographic, such as disabled students, to improve as fast as that rising standard, the school will not get a passing grade.

"We're still continuing our upward trend except for schools with high minority populations," said Carole Cooper, District 300's director of accountability and assessment.

Like U-46, District 300 was hit hard by the elimination of the IMAGE test.

District 300 is working to make sure tested vocabulary is being emphasized in the district's bilingual courses, Cooper said.

The district has also adopted numerous programs to try to boost achievement at its high schools, such as instituting department heads, starting freshman academies and offering ACT preparation courses.