Blair fails to meet AYP for 2004

Silver Chips Online would like to make corrections regarding the March 6, 2005 article "Blair fails to meet AYP for 2004." The article contained some factual inaccuracies about Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The article implied that Blair is subject to a section of Title I that details corrective action to be taken against schools that consistently fail. The article stated that if Blair failed to meet AYP for 2005, parents would be given the choice to have their child transferred to another school. This is not true; Blair does not receive Title I funding and therefore is not subject to the corrective action specific to schools that receive the funding. We also stated that after six consecutive years of failure, Blair would come under federal control and would be restructured. In actuality, after six years of failure Blair would come under state control, though the result would be largely the same; that is, the school would still be restructured. We apologize for publishing this misinformation.

For the second consecutive year, Blair failed to achieve the minimum required percentage of passing scores on standardized tests to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

Mandated by the federal government in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, AYP measures improvement in student proficiency in reading and math. Failure to meet AYP for two straight years, the situation Blair is in now, initiates a process known as "School Improvement." Should Blair fail to meet AYP again this year, parents will have the option of having their children attend another school in the school system. Ultimately, after six straight years of failure to meet AYP, Blair would come under federal control and would be restructured.

"They could replace any and all staff relevant to the school's failure, and that's all of us," Principal Phillip Gainous said during a televised message intended for Blair faculty at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 11.

A comprehensive explanation of the corrective action to be taken each year can be found in the Silver Chips article Bush's reforms to impact Blair.

In cooperation with the federal government, each school and school system in Maryland must administer the Maryland State Assessment (MSA), which tests 10th grade reading, and the Geometry High School Assessment (HSA) to their students with the objective of meeting a state-established quota of passing students. This quota is called the Annual Measurable Objective (AMO), a certain percentage of students required to pass in order to meet AYP. The AMO will rise each year until the 2013-2014 school year, at which time all students in each school and school system must be 100 percent proficient in reading and math.

The difficulty that some schools, including Blair, are facing now involves the way the AYP must be met. Each school's student body is separated into 37 groups, such as ethnic, racial, financial and disability groups. All 37 groups must make AYP in order for the school to pass, and yet students in Special Education and Limited English Proficient students are administered the same test as the other groups. Each of the Montgomery County public schools besides Blair that did not meet AYP for 2004, including Gaithersburg High School, John F. Kennedy High School and Sherwood High School, came up short of the AMO in either Special Education or Limited English Proficient groups. While both of these groups made AYP at Blair, the Hispanics group did not.

The administration's plan

Blair administrators noted that concentrating on improving MSA scores in groups such as Special Education is made easier by their isolation, but because Hispanic students are not separated from the larger student body, the administration will be forced to employ a school-wide strategy just to improve scores in that one group.

However, the Hispanics group was not alone in scoring poorly. Many groups' Math scores just barely made AYP. Gainous sees justification for a school-wide approach to improving MSA and HSA scores in the face of these marginal scores.

"If we don't do anything, we're in deep trouble," he said. "Because if we don't, we might be failing in four categories."

According to Gainous, a way to maximize efficiency is to focus attention on students who could potentially boost the average score more than others. If all the students who usually score on or near the minimum required to pass the test could "get over the hump," as Gainous put it, the average would increase dramatically, more so than if students who usually score high above or far below passing raised their scores.

"We're going to attack everybody equally, but we know that some students are hovering around the passing grade, and if we can get their scores a little higher, the average will go up far more than if we got any other group's score up," Gainous said. "While we're looking at this holistically, we're also looking for certain small groups to carry the other students in their groups."

The resultant data from all 37 groups on the MSA and HSA can potentially feature the same student multiple times. For example, a student can be half-black, half-Hispanic, enrolled in the ESOL program and on the Free and Reduced Meal plan. That student's MSA test would count five times, twice among the ethnic groups, once in the ESOL group, once in the FARM group and one more time in the aggregate. Should that student fail, the school would be penalized five times over. Gainous found this particular aspect of the test to be unfair. "The school just got zapped in black, Hispanic, Free and Reduced Lunch and ESOL," he said of that hypothetical situation. "That's why a lot of people think this test isn't fair."

Additionally, he noted, if any student decides not to take the MSA the first time, it counts as a failure. And if that same student then takes the MSA on the makeup test and fails, "we get whammed twice over," Gainous said.

However, the class of 2008 now has to pass the MSA to graduate, which, Gainous predicts, should generally mitigate the apathy that has surrounded the test in the past.

"We might find [failing tests in the past] not to be reflective of teaching and learning but how seriously [students] take the test," Gainous said.

The administration has devised other tactics to help meet AYP as well. "We're getting smarter about the test," Gainous said. For instance, the school is adopting a program meant to improve test scores that focuses solely on reading skills. Gainous claimed that improving students' Reading test scores will have a beneficial effect on Math test scores as well. "Most of what we're doing is essentially reading and writing," he said. "If students learn to read and write, they can pass any test."

Another idea for improving test scores came from the original functional tests. "When the functional tests first came out, we added a computerized test some years later, and students' percentages were much higher on the computerized test," Gainous said. Gainous explained that this difference in scores might be attributed to students' being more comfortable with a computer than with a pencil and paper.

The confidence interval

A critical component of the AYP system is a statistical error-prevention device known as the "confidence interval." The confidence interval is a range that extends equally above the AMO line and below it. While its size varies from group to group, its intent is always the same: If the group does not pass AMO but lands inside the confidence interval, MCPS counts that group as passing. For instance, on the 2004 Reading score, Free and Reduced Meal students' scores came close to the AMO for Reading (in this case an average score of 45.5 percent) but fell short by 4.5 percent. However, that group still made AYP because its data fell inside the confidence interval. According to Jose Stevenson, MCPS Coordinator of Student Assessment Testing, the confidence interval is meant to ensure that erroneous data does not wrongfully fail a school.

"Because the AMO is based on a percentage, we may have one child preventing the group from making AYP," he explained. "By having that kind of what we call an 'error band,' we give schools the benefit of the doubt."

The range of the confidence interval is determined by the size of the group: The fewer the students in a group, the more leniency their data is given. At Bethesda-Chevy Chase (BCC), 20 students, or approximately six percent of BCC's total Math test takers, represented the Asians testing group. The Asians group's confidence interval was so wide that for the 2004 Math score it extended farther down than zero percent. In other words, if none of the Asian students at BCC had shown up for the test, their group still would have passed.

The confidence interval leaves open the possibility that different schools will be held to varying standards. Although Blair's Hispanics didn't make the confidence interval, Seneca Valley, Springbrook and Wheaton Hispanics did make the confidence interval without having to pass the AMO. At Seneca Valley, the confidence interval's range for Hispanics extended to 11.9 percent. Blair Hispanics scored 15.8 percent, so had they been given as lenient a confidence interval as Seneca Valley, the group would have met AYP, and Blair would have met AYP overall.

Stevenson acknowledged the possibility that confidence intervals hold random schools to different standards. "I'm sure some people may see that," he said.

Gainous said the system is unfair but that the school will have to live with it. "We didn't make [AYP] because we have more kids," he said. "And we can fuss and moan and roll on the floor, but all [these tests are] from the federal government."

All schools are given the option of challenging their data, but Gainous said he and Blair's ESOL Resource teacher/data manager Joseph Bellino already did everything they could to prove the data wrong but were unsuccessful. "Central Office shipped us some data," Gainous said. "Some students [listed as having taken the MSA] hadn't been in the school system for years. We were getting close to making it, but we ended up short by 12 [passing] students."

Making room for the test

The implementation of the MSA and HSA has redirected resources. Notably, the state has ordered MCPS to change its curriculum to better prepare students for the tests. "The state can tell the counties what they're going to teach," said Gainous.

The new curriculum is called the Maryland State Voluntary Curriculum. "You can do your own thing," explained Gainous, "and that's ok, but this is what the test is on." In other words, the county must find a way for students to pass the MSA and HSA, so MCPS "realigned the curriculum to more closely line up with the test."

An adverse side effect of realigning the curriculum for the test, some officials believe, is that other programs that teach material irrelevant to the test but important nonetheless ultimately get dropped from the curriculum. "The curriculum has become more narrowly focused on what's on the test," said Gainous. "Some people think that some of the richness in the curriculum is lost as a result."

Additionally, some staff have lost their jobs as teachers due to a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that requires them to be "highly qualified" or to possess a bachelor's degree in the subjects they teach and full state certification and to demonstrate knowledge of the content in the courses they teach.

"The federal government says that every student is owed a highly qualified teacher," explained Gainous. However, he claimed there are "plenty of quality teachers who are not [highly qualified]."

In order for these teachers to become highly qualified, they must take a number of college courses. Before the No Child Left Behind Act, Gainous said, the time teachers were given to take these courses was longer. "Now, because of No Child Left Behind, that window is much smaller, and teachers hired by MCPS are forced to become substitute teachers." The reason for this downgrade in status is because No Child Left Behind does not require substitute teachers to be highly certified.

It can be overwhelming for teachers to be forced to become substitutes, Gainous said. "All their health benefits are gone. They have the same classes, same students. But they're only being paid a substitute's salary."

According to Gainous, this is causing a shortage of educators available. "Each county is competing for dwindling resources in [highly qualified] teachers," he said. "That would make more sense if the colleges were cranking out more teachers."

The bottom line

Gainous said that the entire faculty is doing what they can to prepare Blair for the 2005 MSA and HSA this May. However, he said, it may be hard to predict which group is most in danger of failing.

"We only have one year's worth of data," Stevenson agreed. "We will need to have three or more years of data before we can see any trends."

The first year of implementation of the standardized tests, 2003, Special Education and Limited English Proficient groups did not meet AYP, and in 2004, a completely different group, Hispanics, failed to meet AYP. This year, Gainous said, could be anyone's guess, as "it's a whole new set of students."

AYP data for Blair and the other schools in the county can be accessed at www.msp.msde.state.md.us.