While the state continues to build a road to student success paved with high standards and goals, the Edmonds School District right now is drawing the map to guide them.
As mandated by the federal government, districts throughout the state of Washington have until Dec. 15 to create a plan that will help all students reach the standards set by the new education law.
The Edmonds School Board is scheduled to formally approve the plan for the district at their regularly scheduled meeting Dec. 16.
The road map, titled by staff as the District Improvement Plan, includes various strategies for each school to help students meet those standards. The state requires districts to show through 2014 a consistent increase in scores on the reading and math portions of the Washington Assessment of Learning exams given annually to fourth- seventh- and 10th-graders, and improved graduation and attendance rates as set by the state.
For Edmonds, striving for those goals entails implementing procedures to monitor student progress on the WASL and to set up intervention programs to help students whose scores fall behind before it becomes a problem. Summer and after school programs are both options the district is considering.
Also, while the WASL is given to fourth, seventh and tenth graders, the district will continue to use additional state and district assessments in alignment with the WASL in grades 2, 3, 6 and 8 to further monitor student achievement.
The district’s strategies must be strong in action to meet the goals set by the state.
Overall, the state is looking for students to meet state standards on the math and reading portion of the WASL by 2014. But there is a caveat to that goal; “students” include English language learners and special education students. And the consequences of not meeting adequate yearly progress were already apparent after last year’s WASL scores were released in September. Even though students in the Edmonds School District made significant gains on the WASL, the district, along with 400 others in the state, was listed as “failing” because not all groups of students, including ELL and special education groups, met state standards on the test.
In addition, the new law requires schools that remain on the list for two years to provide additional teacher training, create district improvement plans and offer to transfer students to other schools in the district – tasks that do not come cheap.
But officials in the Edmonds School District said they want to take the challenge one step further by also adding goals for the social and emotional growth of students, assistant superintendent Ellen Kahan said.
“No Child Left Behind only set the benchmark for academic achievement,” Kahan said. “We wanted to set a further benchmark and look at the whole child.”
Strategies to do so are still being discussed, Kahan said, but may include student attitude surveys and programs to increase parent and community involvement in the schools.
Those involved with creating the District Improvement Plan are supportive of the challenge set by No Child Left Behind.
“It forces us to look pretty hard at who in our school is not achieving – that’s never really been a requirement,” said Meadowdale Elementary School principal Kyle Kinoshita. “And to a lot of us its been unacceptable, and we’re happy we now have to do it.”
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