Schools that need to improve: The list gets longer

The number of Washington schools judged as "needs improvement" under the federal No Child Left Behind law grew to 248 this year, even though the schools had to meet the same test-score targets as last year.

Based on preliminary results released Thursday, about 91 elementary and secondary schools joined the list, including 33 in King and Snohomish counties. Schools have about a month to appeal.

Twenty schools also earned their way off the list. In Seattle, those included Roosevelt High and Whitworth Elementary.

A number of schools already on the list, however, moved to higher levels of sanctions. For the first time, a school in the Seattle area — Chinook Middle in the Highline School District — must make plans to restructure if it misses targets again next year. Eight schools in Eastern Washington moved into their sixth year on the list, which requires their districts to make changes in governance.

The number of districts on the needs-improvement list dropped to 28 from 29 last year. The four districts in King and Snohomish counties are Highline, Marysville, Renton and Seattle.

Congress passed the law known as No Child Left Behind in 2001. It requires schools and districts to help all students pass their states' reading and math exams by 2014. In Washington, those exams are part of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).

In general, the law requires that schools and districts meet certain test-score targets each year that vary by subject and grade level. The schools must hit those targets for all students, plus eight subgroups: five ethnic groups, and students who are learning English, in special-education programs or who live in poverty.

Off the list


Five area schools made enough progress to get off the No Child Left Behind needs-improvement list. The schools are:

Centennial Middle School (Snohomish School District)

Monroe High School (Snohomish)

Roosevelt High School (Seattle)

Sacajawea Middle School (Federal Way)

Whitworth Elementary School (Seattle)

In practice, the regulations have many twists and turns, and some schools can fall short of the required scores yet still stay off the needs-improvement list. And some schools can fall short if they meet the targets but fail other requirements such as how many students take the exams.

If schools or districts fall short for two years in a row, schools face sanctions that start with giving students the choice to transfer to higher-scoring schools at district expense. (Under the law, however, sanctions apply only to schools or districts that receive money from the federal Title I program, which provides dollars to help low-income students.)

Among the local schools that must offer choice for the first time this year are five schools in Seattle: Bailey Gatzert, Hawthorne, Highland Park and Thurgood Marshall elementary schools, and Madrona K-8.

Few parents, however, have opted to move their children. At Chinook Middle, for example, just 28 students left last year in a school with an enrollment of about 630 students.

WASL scores in Highline, where 11 schools are on the needs-improvement list, rose this year, and some are at all-time highs, said district spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers. But she said they need to make progress even faster.

"We're absolutely committed to doing that," she said.

Schools end up on the list for a variety of reasons.

At the Community School in Kirkland, for example, the entire fourth-grade class opted out of taking the WASL last year, so the school received a score of zero.

At Beverly Park Elementary in Highline, students hit the test-score targets, but the school had too many unexcused absences, another target that schools must hit.

Next fall, the needs-improvement lists may grow much more because schools and districts must reach higher test-score targets, as required once every three years.

Still, the list has not ballooned to anywhere near the number many predicted when the No Child law was passed. The 248 schools represent about 11 percent of all schools in the state.

That's partly because states like Washington successfully lobbied the U.S. Department of Education for changes that gave schools and districts more breathing room — such as changing test-score targets once every three years rather than every year.

And schools have also worked hard to raise student achievement, Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson said Thursday.

Bergeson's office worked this year with the two Eastern Washington districts that were required, under the law, to face "corrective action." Bergeson said that started with an outside team that did an audit of each district's spending, its professional development and whether its curriculum matched state learning standards.

In Washington state, the emphasis has been on helping schools improve rather than making wholesale changes in a school or district's staff or closing a school, as the law allows. And some of the sanctions mentioned in the law aren't legal in Washington. Bergeson, for example, doesn't have the power to intervene in a low-performing school.

"One of these days, we're going to have to deal with that," she said.

One of Bergeson's frustrations with the law, however, is that schools can make a great deal of improvement and not get recognition for that.

Seattle's Rainier Beach High, for example, made "adequate yearly progress" this year, but stayed on the list because it takes two years to earn your way off.

Rainier Beach Principal Robert Gary attributed his school's improvement to extra classes the school required sophomores to take last year. Every Tuesday, sophomores stayed an extra hour to study math, science and language arts.

But Bergeson said one of the law's strengths is that it helps schools recognize they're not meeting the needs of some students. One example, she said, was Sammamish High in Bellevue, a high-scoring school that met all the targets, except for math among its Hispanic and low-income students.

Sammamish has now identified all the 11th-graders who didn't pass the WASL in 10th grade, and all of the incoming ninth-grade students who didn't pass the WASL in seventh grade, said Ann Oxrieder, spokeswoman for the Bellevue district.

The No Child law comes up for congressional review as early as next year, and Bergeson hopes to lobby for more changes — especially to allow schools to be judged by how much progress they make, not whether they hit a specific test-score target.

That's something the U.S. Department of Education is studying in a pilot program.

Times staff reporters Emily Heffter and Rachel Tuinstra contributed to this report.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com