KOLOA — Koloa School students had a reason to celebrate Wednesday when their principal Cynthia Matsuoka called a special lunch assembly to honor the school’s fourth-grade class. At the assembly, Matsuoka announced that Koloa School had achieved an “Adequate Yearly
KOLOA — Koloa School students had a reason to celebrate Wednesday when their principal Cynthia Matsuoka called a special lunch assembly to honor the school’s fourth-grade class.
At the assembly, Matsuoka announced that Koloa School had achieved an “Adequate Yearly Progress” rating based on results of the 2002-03 Hawai’i State Assessment, which means the school has met a critical federal “No Child Left Behind” law standard. In a worst-case scenario, if the school hadn’t made the grade, the school could have been taken over, had its teachers and administration removed, and possibly been run by a non-governmental education company.
To celebrate their new AYP status, all 200-plus students were treated to an ice-cream dessert.
The fourth-grade students were third graders when a week-long battery of tests were administered during the 2002-2003 school year, and in a symbolic gesture of “passing on (of) the responsibility,” torches were passed on to current third- and fifth-grade students who will be taking the tests in April.
Following the preliminary release of AYP results on Sept. 18, some 25 schools statewide filed appeals, with Koloa among 13 being reconciled in favor of the schools, said Greg Knudsen, state Department of Education spokesman.
Koloa School was the only one from Kaua’i to make the AYP through the appeals process.
Koloa School was labeled a “corrective-action” school in the current No Child Left Behind status, which means the third and fifth graders must pass this year’s battery of tests for the school to achieve a “In good standing – unconditional” rating.
Radford High School on O’ahu earned the distinction as the only high school in the state to achieve the “Adequate Yearly Progress” rating.
According to Knudsen, in the final tally for the Hawai’i public school system, 108 schools met AYP, 169 did not meet AYP, and three were exempt because they are new schools.
In final determinations of No Child Left Behind status, 193 schools are in “good standing (85 unconditionally, and 108 pending results of their 2003-04 AYP status), 15 are “needing improvement (three in year one and 12 in year two),” 25 are in “corrective action,” 44 are “planning for restructuring,” and three new charter schools are exempt.
AYP is dependent on meeting up to 37 separate benchmarks relating to academic achievement, participation, and retention or graduation rates.
Most of the successful appeals were based on challenges to the participation calculations. To achieve AYP, 95 percent of the students enrolled in a tested grade level have to participate.
In most cases that were appealed, students listed on a school’s class roll at the beginning of the testing period had moved or transferred to another school before the testing was conducted.
School officials appealed, saying that they cannot be held accountable for students no longer enrolled. Since the required participation rate also applies to every student subgroup (grouped by ethnicity, disabilities, limited English proficiency, and low-income status), the non-participation of only one or a few students can make a difference between meeting, or not meeting, AYP.
The appeal required meticulous and time-consuming work, requiring manual, student-by-student, class-roll comparisons, and in order to minimize future appeals, the schools are now being asked to confirm their class rolls immediately preceding their test dates.
