More Chesterfield schools in jeopardy of not meeting benchmarks
Published: April 27, 2009
All but 10 schools in Chesterfield County are in danger of failing No Child Left Behind's rising annual objectives for next school year.
The federal educational accountability law enacted in 2002 requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
No Child Left Behind's Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks for Virginia schools increase every year toward that 100 percent. This year, the required pass rates are 81 percent for reading and 79 percent in math, a 4 percentage point jump from last year.
That's 10 percentage points above the state Standards of Learning benchmarks, said Lin Corbin-Howerton, director of school improvement for Chesterfield's 64 schools.
Currently, 49 Chesterfield schools are in line with Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks, down from 52 in the previous year. All county schools are fully accredited by the state's Standards of Learning, including 10 who failed to meet the federal No Child Left Behind.
"As the passing rate for making AYP climbs each year, the number of schools that are in jeopardy of not making it next year tends to grow because they have to continue to make this big improvement," said Kevin R. Hughes, assistant director of school improvement for Chesterfield's schools.
Henrico County projects that 30 of its 69 schools would make Adequate Yearly Progress by the fall, down from 46 in the current year. In Hanover County, 21 of 22 schools would make AYP. All of the county schools currently meet the benchmarks. In Richmond, 11 of 49 schools would hit the mark, compared with 47 of 49 schools that made it for this year.
Schools across the country face major challenges in staying on track with the No Child Left Behind's 100 percent proficiency goal. According to the National Education Association, the rate at which schools are failing to make AYP in several states has doubled, tripled and even quadrupled.
The number of Virginia schools making AYP has remained almost flat, at about 70 percent.
Educators hope that President Barack Obama's administration will make some changes to the law. He promised in his campaign to make reforms but so far, he has not discussed it.
Chesterfield conducts an analysis of each of the schools and where they stand on the AYP benchmarks in the fall, based on the previous year SOL scores. Elementary and middle schools struggled in reading and high schools in math last year, Corbin-Howerton said.
To meet the Adequate Yearly Progress, schools are required to meet 29 indicators, including students with disabilities and English learners testing successfully. Those students struggle the most to pass the tests, she said.
"The real problem, to me, is the fact that students with disabilities can learn anything," Corbin-Howerton said. "They just need more time. The same concept applies to students learning English. It takes longer for a child who's learning English to learn a skill or concept in English. But every year, you have to make this much progress to make AYP."
Once the schools are identified as being in danger of not making AYP, resources are allocated, Corbin-Howerton said.
"You can't do broad-brush intervention anymore," she said. "It's got to be very, very targeted and very strategic."
Because research shows that general after-school remediation programs don't work, schools have incorporated extra help in the morning and during lunch.
Thomas Dale High School, however, started an after-school program this year with a unique approach. The school sends letters to students who are weak in a particular subject and encourages them to attend sessions targeting that subject.
Based on last year's scores, 10 schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress. Matoaca Middle School has never made AYP, said its principal, Carla Mathews. School staff members pore over student data to identify multiple needs of individual students and look for solutions, she said.
"You're trying to turn over every rock, every leaf and your making every effort to reach every single child and then you're stifled again and you're trying to think, 'Why did we miss this?'" she said.
Matoaca Middle, like the other schools failing AYP, is fully accredited under the state's standards. But you can't stop there, Mathews said. NCLB focuses on the achievement progress of subgroups such as poor students, students with disabilities and students with limited English.
"If you stop with just SOLs, it would be possible for a school to appear to be a strong school because it would have enough students who could pass the state standards, but it could hide subgroups of students that are not being served," she said.
No Child Left Behind's 100 percent goal doesn't seem attainable, Corbin-Howerton said.
"I don't think anybody in the field of education thinks that it's reasonable," she said. "It should be our goal. A hundred percent of our kids should be able to read and do science and math."
Contact staff writer Juan Antonio Lizama at
or (804) 649-6513.
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Reader Reactions
12steprevenge, Don’t be talking about having low expectations for your students! I have children whose IQ scores we won’t discuss (moderate range of MR), but who are reading 3rd grade material in 3rd grade (it is the comprehension that gets them!). We taught them to read at home using ABEKA - PHONICS! The school wanted to only teach them to memorize words, saying they would only be sight readers. Surprise! They learned phonics just fine - takes work but work well worth it!
Whenever you prejudge what your students can learn, you are limiting their potential. Who says learning ancient architecture will benefit a single student in Virginia??!! My teenage son is a straight A student, NHS member, and I don’t know if he needs to know Chemistry and Calculus that he is learning. But math skills teach thinking skills and logic skills beyond the actual exercise of doing the math. My girls are doing 3rd grade math but have MD labels. You could just as easily make the claim that for your students, reading is irrelevant. And by the way, only 1% of students anywhere have cognitive impairment that significantly impairs their ability to learn to read. So why are almost 40% not reading on grade level by 4th grade? Should be 1%!!! I know people who have cerebral palsy who you would probably write off as vegetative who have Master’s degrees! Why? Their parents and teachers had high expectations for them and didn’t cream them off into the “babysitting” Play Doh 101 classes. Check out Dick Hoyt and son Team Hoyt - http://www.teamhoyt.com/history.shtml
ALL children can learn - no excuses!
We will have to agree to disagree on this one!
“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you are usually right.“
Also, I would send you a copy of our IRS return if you send me your email address. We are in the 1.99% bracket - our taxable income is less than yours I’ll bet. We paid $1,400 in federal taxes last year. So no, we are not in a high socioeconomic status nor barely middle class. We sacrifice a great deal for our two to go to private school. Our monthly payment is less than most poor folks’ rent each month. We are older parents and had our mortgage almost paid off by the time we put our son in private school in 7th grade. Our daughter followed when she got to 6th. We had no “choice” but private - our neighborhood middle school is in 6th year failing! Our private school is not full of rich kids. In fact, families are helping about 10% of the students remain in the school through a Family Share program. We drive a car that is 20 years old and another that is 13 years old. Both on their last legs.
I grew up on a farm, a very poor white child. I fed cows after school and drove a tractor and bushhogged from the age of 6 on. I did just fine in school, but that was ancient history. Very different today, which is the reason for this subject!
Best to you!
Responses, broken down:
“I do disagree, though, that the SOLs in Virginia are unattainable for certain students. I am convinced that the standards, over time, have been lowered already so as to be meaningless.“
I beg to differ. If a child cannot master letter/sound recognition because of cognitive deficiencies (and, yes, such deficiencies are REAL and not just a symptom of the medicalization of education), how can they be expected to explain the significance and impact of, say, the Charters of the Virginia Company of London and relate it to the theories of government set forth in the Magna Carta. More importantly, why is a child like this expected to be able to use such information in a meaningful way? Sure, I can teach that kid to correctly identify an esoteric piece of information to answer a question, but is it meaningful to him? I would suggest that it is not. A child like that doesn’t need to be able to distinguish the difference between Ionian, Doric, and Corinthian columns in Greek architecture; such a child needs concrete skills which are applicable to situations which he will face in real life.
The standards are not relaxed. Instead of checking out the released tests, check out the Standards themselves. We set the bar high, but to acheive the pass rates required by NCLB (which we really established ourselves here in VA), we have watered down the test so that it barely quantifies any real learning. Did you know that the pass rate for most individual SOL tests is just over 50%? How is that mastery on any level?
“In the private school that my teenagers attend, I can almost guarantee that the first graders there would score 100% on the Virginia 3rd grade assessment.“
Herein lies your disconnect with education (no disrespect intended). If you are of high enough socioeconomic status to be able to afford to send MULTIPLE children to private school, then, statistically, they already had a leg up on most of society before they even started school. That’s not making excuses for everyone else in the world who may not be as affluent as you, but there are established correlations between socioeconomic status and academic acheivement (not to necessarily imply causation, I’m just making reference to sociological fact). I won’t belabor the points in this forum, but know that the demographics of your childrens’ school are going to be much different than that of your average public school merely by having that financial screen in place.
“As I understand it, when Virginia first began to do SOL testing, we also did Stanford 9 testing in conjunction. Correct me if I am wrong. But Virginia dropped the Stanford 9 testing years ago. It would be interesting to see how students would do today on the Stanford 10, and compare today’s scores with the last scores we have from several years back. That would tell us how the state is really doing. “
I can’t speak for every school system, but most do administer the Stanford 10 or another type of acheivement test already. The information is out there if you choose to seek it (my lunch break is almost over, so no time to dig it up).
“Unless schools are willing to teach scientifically research-based reading instruction, outcomes are never going to improve. As long as we teach, “language arts” as if reading is an “art”, children will never truly be educated in public schools. Reading instruction is ROCKET SCIENCE; it is not an art. We know how to do it, we just refuse to do it. We can do better!“
Actually, every school at which I’ve taught in the past 12 years has utilized research-based reading programs (Success For All, Read 180, et cetera). What do you think they teach reading specialists in graduate school (hint: EVERYTHING is research based… they just love the University of Kansas)? Just for clarification, reading is not the same thing as language arts. Reading is a subset of the skills required for language arts, but to reduce literature, written composition, historical perspective, et cetera to the application of one particular skill is to do a disservice to the subject. Here in public schools, if a child is identified as having a reading problem, they often receive BOTH Language Arts and Reading as separate classes.
“Our paradigm definitely needs to shift, but as long as political interests and funding incentives supercede the needs of children, this will not happen, do you think?“
I’m sure it won’t happen in that case. Agreed and agreed. Until then, I’ll just keep on doing the best with what I’ve got and trying to teach students in a manner meaningful to them DESPITE the flaws (as I believe teachers have done for many generations).
Thanks for the food for thought.
12steprevenge,
Very good assessment of the way accountability is working (or NOT) in Virginia under NCLB!
I do disagree, though, that the SOLs in Virginia are unattainable for certain students. I am convinced that the standards, over time, have been lowered already so as to be meaningless. All one has to do is look at the released tests on VDOE to see that SOL assessments have been “normed” to ensure benchmarks will be met. So why haven’t they been met by many schools? I looked at the 3rd grade SOLs just yesterday. I was appalled that most of the questions are first-grade level (or below). Many of the science and social studies questions are not even science and social studies questions. You may disagree, but an example of a science question is that 4 snakes with different patterns are shown, and the student must pick the one that has the description given. Excuse me, but this is a reading comprehension question. Another asks the student to estimate the size of a given pinecone. Are these science questions? So I think the SOL assessments are the FLOOR for achievement for ANY child. In the private school that my teenagers attend, I can almost guarantee that the first graders there would score 100% on the Virginia 3rd grade assessment. So your comment that we must “lower the bar on reading and math to a point where it is meaningless in terms of real achievement” is an actuality today! (in my humble opinion)
I invite readers to check it out for themselves:
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Assessment/releasedtests.html
As I understand it, when Virginia first began to do SOL testing, we also did Stanford 9 testing in conjunction. Correct me if I am wrong. But Virginia dropped the Stanford 9 testing years ago. It would be interesting to see how students would do today on the Stanford 10, and compare today’s scores with the last scores we have from several years back. That would tell us how the state is really doing.
Unless schools are willing to teach scientifically research-based reading instruction, outcomes are never going to improve. As long as we teach, “language arts” as if reading is an “art”, children will never truly be educated in public schools. Reading instruction is ROCKET SCIENCE; it is not an art. We know how to do it, we just refuse to do it. We can do better!
I love your comparison to Copernicus world-view. Our paradigm definitely needs to shift, but as long as political interests and funding incentives supercede the needs of children, this will not happen, do you think?
Check out:
http://www.sopriswest.com/pdfs/whole_language_high_jinks.pdf
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/rocketsci.pdf
Thanks for your intelligent comment, 12steprevenge! Wish more educators would speak out!
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.“ - Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is going to be something very difficult to meet. As a product of Chesterfield County Schools, I see the positives within the county as well as the negatives. You will always have the children that will NEVER try to learn anything. They are too concerned with their personal lives, and parents can only do so much. However, Chesterfield County has a lot of work to do. My younger sister who suffers from a slight form of mental retardation, graduated from Chesterfield county in 2007. She was in Special Education from Elementary through High School and somehow graduated with a NORMAL degree. My sister cannot spell, she cannot do basic math and she cannot count money correctly. Chesterfield County PUSHED her, and I am sure many others, through the system, but at the cost of the child and his or hers future.
Well, when you set an unreasonable goal, you have good reason to expect people to fail to meet it. 100% is a figure which will never be met unless we lower the bar on reading and math to a point where it is meaningless in terms of real achievement.
When VA bought into the NCLB demands, we committed ourselves to failure in 2014. There never has been and never will be a time when EVERY SINGLE STUDENT in the state will be able to meet those standards. That’s just reality. There is a continuum of intelligence and cognitive abilities in humans that exists and we are ignoring it by trying to fit everyone into the same little box of learning. Now, instead of reworking the paradigm, we see schools pulling “smoke and mirrors” tricks to reclassify children so their scores will not negatively affect the schools’ AYP ratings.
This is done not in the interests of the students at all, but rather in the interest of those higher ups who worry about how low test scores will reflect on their professional records. Heck, some schools are even excluding special education students from SOL assessments if they are in self contained classes, thus denying them the opportunity to receive a standard high school diploma. Is this legal? Highly doubtful. Is it contrary to the spirit of the law, at least? Most certainly. It is a sad state of affairs that our leaders feel they must break the protocol for individualized education in order to attempt to conform to the larger standard.
People struggled for years to make the evidence gathered from astronomy fit into the paradigm of Earth-centered universe, despite the ridiculous assertions it forced them into. It wasn’t until scientists finally accepted the failure of system in which they were operating that they began to once again make forward progress.
Perhaps it is time for us, too, to reevaluate the way we are going about ensuring standards of quality in education.
And yet Newsome in all his grand wisdom sees it necessary to lay-off the very people who do the majority of remediation for the students most at risk. Typical!
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