Achievement Labels and NCLB Designations Released

Bioscience High School earned an Excelling label, North High was Highly Performing and eight of 14 Phoenix Union schools received State Achievement Profiles of Performing Plus or better, according to accountability labels released today by the Arizona Department of Education.

The No Child Left Behind federal accountability measure of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) were also released today.

The rankings are based, in part, on 2010 AIMS Spring results. The District saw a seven-point gain in 10th Grade AIMS Reading, a slight gain in Writing scores, but its Math scores, like scores throughout the state, dropped.

Five schools-Betty Fairfax, Franklin Police and Fire, Metro Tech, Bioscience and Cyber met AYP.

Bioscience earned an Excelling label for the third consecutive year, with 89 percent of its 10th graders passing AIMS Math, 99 percent passing Reading and 92 percent meeting the Writing standards. In Math, 26 percent of the students exceeded the standards.

North High School earned a Highly Performing label, climbing two rankings from last year’s Performing mark.

Metro Tech registered Performing Plus for the third year in a row and was joined by Cesar Chavez, Central, Maryvale, Trevor Browne and Franklin Police and Fire. Every other school was Performing.

The State Achievement Profiles are Underperforming, Performing, Performing Plus, Highly Performing and Excelling. Performing Plus recognizes schools that have enough students demonstrating proficiency to earn a Highly Performing or Excelling profile, but do not have a sufficient number of students who exceed the AIMS standards. Performing means that a school meets the state’s expectations with regard to student proficiency in reaching the state’s academic standards.
The Achievement Profiles are part of the state’s accountability system, Arizona LEARNS, that evaluates school performance based on AIMS results for 10th, 11th and 12th graders, five-year graduation and dropout rates. Credit is also given to schools that meet the federal government’s Adequate Yearly Progress requirement.

Meeting the federal AYP standards means that schools have met achievement targets on the 10th grade AIMS tests in math and reading, four-year graduation rates and have 95% or more test takers in each subgroup. Besides the overall 10th grade population, there are eight sub groups (Hispanic, Black, White, Asian, Native American, English Language Learners (ELL), Special Ed, and low income). For a school to meet AYP, it must meet AYP in each of 63 categories. If a school misses in one of those categories, the school does not meet AYP. The Phoenix Union schools that fell short did not meet achievement targets in Special Ed and/or ELL subgroups.

The District gained 7 percentage points in 10th grade AIMS reading to 67, and 1 point in writing to 57, but fell 9 points in math. The state average for math also dropped 8 points to 58 percent of students passing. Every school except Bioscience saw drops in math, some in double digits.

We are reflective of the entire state with our math scores. This year’s AIMS math test was a new test that was not only longer, but aligned more closely to the national core standards of math, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Accountability Deborah Gonzalez said. The bright spot is that we nearly doubled the percentage of students that exceeded math (from 7 to 13%).

The District’s reading scores moved to 67 percent, with every school making reading gains, except one, which showed no growth. Eleven of the 14 schools improved in both reading and writing scores.

Phoenix Union made modest gains in reaching the state averages in each category, improving reading by 4, math by 2 and writing by 1 point over last year.

One group of students that experienced AIMS success benefited from the AVID program, or AdvancementVia Individual Determination. The program identifies students in the academic middle and places them in an elective class that focuses on college preparation. For the second consecutive year, over 80% of 10th graders in the AVID elective met or exceeded AIMS Reading and Writing the first time, compared to non-AVID students. Reading scores were at 85 percent passing compared to 65 percent non-AVID. Writing was at 85 percent for AVID students compared to 58 percent for non-AVID. At a few schools, there was more than a 30 percentage point difference between the two groups.

2010 Arizona LEARNS Achievement Profiles
Central High School - Performing Plus

NCLB AYP
No

Click here to download the Phoenix Union High School District AIMS 2010 (10th Grade) scores.

Source: Phoenix Union High School District