The Haines Borough School District has met federal No Child Left Behind yearly progress standards after failing to do so last year.
Superintendent Michael Byer presented the district’s annual “report card,” a required report to the public on how schools are doing, at Tuesday’s school board meeting.
The improvement means the district won’t have to write a special plan to address falling scores of special education students in language arts, the category in which it has struggled.
Byer attributed the gains to added attention to the area, including a new, computer-based reading program the district purchased last year.
“We were very focused on getting extra assistance to special education students to improve our chances of making it this year. We also were focused on improving the (language arts) program overall.”
The percentage of the district’s students in grades 3-10 with learning disabilities who are proficient at language arts increased this year to 61 percent from 49 percent. The district tested 35 special education students in April.
The state target of proficiency is 77 percent of students but districts get a passing grade even if below the target, if improvement is made from the most recent year.
The number of special education students proficient in math also increased this year to 52 percent from 46 percent last year. That’s still below the state target of 66 percent, but also improvement enough to meet the federal goal.
Federal special education standards are typically the first ones schools fail to meet under No Child Left Behind, Byer said. “We’re working with students with a wide array of disabilities that interfere with their ability to learn. We look to different strategies with each student. It’s a challenge.”
Tests taken last April showed the district as a whole improved 6 percent, with 89 percent scoring at or above proficiency in language arts, he said. Math proficiency improved to 82 percent proficiency, up from 77 percent the previous year.
Next year, however, the district may again feel a pinch from the ever-rising standards for improvement, when the language arts standard rises to 82.88 percent and the math standard goes to 74.57.
“It gets increasingly more difficult,” Byer said.
He said about half the school districts in the state don’t meet some part of the federal law, and that list may grow longer as standards tighten up. The state Department of Education froze Alaska standards in place three years ago.
“The law is controversial in Washington, D.C., and (opposition) doesn’t run on strict party lines. Some states feel that for what federal funding we get, the law is onerous and its goals are unrealistic. There’s also concern that it takes control away from a local process. That’s all being debated,” Byer said.
The district report card showed that 82 percent of high school students graduate in four years. The state standard is a 56 percent graduation rate, Byer said.
Byer said he would be posting the report card on the school district’s web site but wanted to first add interpretive information, as the report’s findings are presented in a technical manner.