School Leaders Praise AYP Success, Plans for Improvement Under Way

The Clawson School District is meeting the state's Adequate Yearly Progress but there is room for improvement in particular subjects for students at each school, according to results released early this week.

, and schools earned an "A" in the school report cards released by the Michigan Department of Education. received a "B."

Adequate Yearly Progress data looks as factors such as how well districts performed on MEAP in English and math, graduation and attendance rates.

Clawson High School Principal Ryan Sines said the school received a "B" because it didn't have enough students meet the "proficient" level in math, social studies, science, English and language arts.

Sines said their School Improvement Plan has a strong focus on math and English/language arts and they have added intervention classes to help students excel in those areas.

"Our staff will be involved in item analysis of the MME (Michigan Merit Examination) and the ACT (American College Testing) to focus on the areas of weakness," Sines said. "The most important point that I can make is that we did make AYP and we continue to strive to improve."

While the Clawson School District met AYP as a whole, students are still not meeting the state's goals in elementary and middle school reading.

Middle School Principal John Dickinson said this is because a subgroup of special education students failed to meet reading expectations. 

"We are pleased that we made overall AYP," Superintendent Cheryl Rogers said. "When numbers are combined across and within buildings, AYP status may change. We are actively seeking alternate materials and teaching strategies to continue to improve our AYP performance in special education."

The full report of schools and grades can be found here.

AYP scores are what the federal government uses to hold schools accountable. They are calculated for all 3,437 public schools in the state using target achievement goals.

Overall Michigan schools saw a 7.1 percentage point decrease in students making AYP, dropping from from 86 percent of schools in 2009-2010 to 79 percent in 2010-2011.

Michigan high school students showed significant declines in the percentage of high schools making AYP, going from 81.9% last year to 60% this year.

Jan Ellis, spokeswoman for the MDE, suggested the drop is the result of increasing the proficiency target amid growing academic expectations. She said every time the state increases the target by 10 or 12 points, especially in math, there tends to be a group of students on the cusp, so that when the score requirements increase, they just don't make it.

She said the math targets, for instance, had not increased for three years in a row, giving some students a chance to start to catch up. Then they jumped significantly this past year, which put students behind again.

"We are raising the bar on what they need to know - to also raise AYP simultaneously is very, very difficult," she said.

Ellis said the state is awaiting word on whether the federal government will give Michigan a waiver on meeting proficiency targets in the next 10 years as it works on boosting overall academic performance.

She said that will allow the state to balance yearly progress with the increase in rigor that schools in Michigan are facing as the state adopts Common Core Standards.

"We want to raise the rigor of what students know, rather than lower the bar," she said.

Common Core Standards essentially means setting specific goals for what students need to know in each subject. For instance, what students should specifically know in each grade's subject area to have a clear understanding of it.

This, Ellis said, will better prepare students for college and career paths, make them ready to take the national assessment test, boost ACT scores, and give them a better understanding of what they are being taught.