Santa Maria-Bonita School District officials are looking for answers regarding the inclusion of three district campuses on a California Department of Education list of “low-performing” schools.
According to Department of Education records, Adam, Alvin, and Oakley schools are three of the more than 180 California elementary schools in need of state intervention because of poor test results. The state board of education approved the list earlier this month.
The schools are now required by law to participate in one of four school intervention models, which include implementing a series of school improvement strategies, turning the site into a charter school, replacing up to 50 percent of the school’s staff, or shutting the campus down indefinitely.
The news came as a bit of a surprise—and frustration—to district and school officials, especially because all of the schools are already on “improvement status” under the No Child Left Behind Act.
“We knew our schools were struggling with test scores,” district representative Maggie White said, adding that the district has been working for the past year with U.C. Santa Barbara consultants on a state-approved, district-wide improvement plan.
Under this plan, she said, testing scores have started to improve exponentially.
White went on to say that the district is “waiting for more information and more guidance from the state” regarding what to do about the schools. But the tentative plan, she said, is to “approach the state and say we already have an improvement program in place.
“But our concern is, will it be enough for the state to say, ‘OK, they’re really taking the bull by the horns and dealing with this head-on?’” she said.
The low-performing status is additionally frustrating, White explained, because according to federal standards, none of the district’s schools would be on the list.
“The federal government had a completely different formula for determining the lowest 5 percent of schools,” she explained. “But California wanted another formula … . It’s all very political, and there are a lot of different reasons for it.”
Many education specialists, like White, say the difference in formulas stems from the state’s failed attempts to apply for federal grants for states that enforce education reform.
“California didn’t want to be in the spotlight for having a large percentage of its high schools with very, very low graduation rates, so it decided to [evaluate] a larger portion of elementary schools,” White explained.
That decision, she said, placed elementary schools that would otherwise not be labeled “low performing” on the list.
Calls made to the department of education for comment were not returned as of press time.
This article appears in Mar 18-25, 2010.