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Following a statewide trend, four of 14 District 834 schools, and the district as a whole, failed to meet progress goals set by the state’s department of education, according to results released late Tuesday.

As has been the case in the district in the past several years, schools — Stillwater Area High School, Oak Park Elementary School, New Heights Charter School and the St. Croix Valley Area Learning Center — missed targets in part due to performances by students with learning disabilities or for whom English is a second language.

Known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the targets are set individually for schools across the state for academic performance, attendance, graduation rates and participation in standardized tests among various ethnic, economic and disability subgroups. Federal requirements state that each school must reaching 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

For the third year running, the district’s St. Croix Valley Area Learning Center failed to meet these benchmarks, while Stillwater Area High School, Oak Park Elementary School and New Heights Charter School failed also to meet AYP goals after meeting them last year.

The district’s fledgling online-learning program neither passed nor failed requirements, as there was apparently insufficient data for Minnesota Department of Education officials to judge its performance. (Target data for individual schools was not made available from the department on Tuesday.)

However, all other district schools met state targets, including Andersen Elementary School, which met academic and attendance goals last year, but had failed to attain AYP due to lesser-than-required performance by special education students.

Challenge of the challenged

Each of the failing schools this year could blame lesser-than-expected performances by students with learning challenges. However, the margin of error was sometimes razor thin.

For instance, the St. Croix Valley ALC, which specializes in educating non-mainstream students and students with learning difficulties, failed to meet AYP due to poor participation among its 103 students in state math and reading testing. According to information provided by the school district, the school missed its AYP target by three students, based on the results of 43 students in the 11th grade attending the program.

Under state requirements, 95 percent of students must achieve a passing score in a discipline for a school to meet its AYP goal.

At Stillwater Area High School, a margin of four of the 677 students tested at the school led to its failure. The school missed its target in the special education subgroup by three students, and in the free-and-reduced lunch subgroup, by only one student.

Oak Park Elementary School had similar results. Having two too few students meet targets in both the free-and-reduced lunch and special education subgroups resulted in its AYP failure. Of the school’s 358 students, 23 percent receive free and reduced lunch. Two-hundred and eleven students were tested.

At New Heights Charter School — where 47 percent of the school’s 124 students receive free-and-reduced lunch and 3 percent are listed in special academic groups — a combination of poor participation and performance was identified. Although technically a part of the school district, the charter school, founded as an alternative to mainstream public schools, is independently administered.

“Based upon district-wide subgroup analyses, Stillwater Area Public Schools did not achieve annual yearly progress for three specific subgroups of students: Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in math and special education students in both reading and math,” states an e-mail prepared by the district’s communications coordinator, Carissa Nelson, relaying information from Chris Balow, the district’s assessment and evaluation coordinator.

“Oak Park Elementary School and Stillwater Area High School as a whole met their adequate yearly progress targets,” the e-mail continued. “However, Oak Park did not meet the AYP target for two small subgroups of students assessed in the area of mathematics.”

In a separate prepared statement from the school district, Superintendent Keith Ryskoski found a bright side to the results.

“Our students are succeeding and continue to outperform state and national averages on the ACT and SAT tests, Advanced Placement exams, and other performance measures,” Ryskoski said. “These are just a few of the many performance standards on which we judge our schools.

“Together, the data shows we are moving in the right direction and our students continue to surpass expectations.”

Consequences

Local consequences for the AYP failures appear to be few, at least in the short term.

Although the St. Croix Valley ALC failed to meet goals for the third time in as many years, it will not be sanctioned by the state because it does not receive federal Title I funding for low-income students.

For this year, Oak Park Elementary School and New Heights Charter School — both of which are scheduled to receive Title I funding in the 2009 school year — will be required only to notify the public of their results. However, if they fail to make AYP next year, the education department would identify each as “in need of improvement.”

As a result, each school would be required to develop a two-year improvement plan and allow students to transfer to other district schools with the district providing transportation. This year, 197 Minnesota schools that receive Title I funding will be required to make such changes.

To date, no District 834 schools receiving Title I funds has failed to meet AYP for more than two consecutive years. Were a school to fail to meet requirements for three consecutive years, the education department would — according to information circulated with the AYP results — require it to offer free, specialized tutoring for low-income students and allow parents to choose educational services from a list of approved providers.

How District 834 compares

Although District 834’s AYP results leave room for improvement, they compare favorably to results statewide, for which the percentage of schools failing to make AYP increased drastically: 49 percent of Minnesota schools failed this year, compared to 38 percent in 2007 and 26 percent in 2006. According to the education department, the poor results are due to the state raising the educational bar and schools failing to jump higher.

“The increase in schools not making AYP is the result of only slight improvements in proficiency and the increases in the reading and math AYP targets required to meet the federal government’s requirement of 100 percent proficiency by 2014,” a department press release states.

Although target data for Minnesota schools wasn’t immediately available, education department statistics demonstrate that District 834 schools were far from alone in AYP failures.

Among the “Big Five” peer school districts that are of similar size and demographics to District 834, several schools failed to meet AYP:

• In Eden Prairie, six of eight schools failed to make AYP. Overall, the school district was listed as failing to meet AYP.

• In Edina, three of three of nine schools failed to make AYP. Overall, the school district failed to make AYP.

• In Mahtomedi, four of five schools made AYP, with only the district’s learning center failing. Overall, the school district succeeded in making AYP.

• In Minnetonka, only one of nine schools — Minnetonka Senior High School — failed to make AYP. However, the school district as a whole also failed.

• In Wayzata, four of 14 schools failed to make AYP. Overall, the school district failed to meet AYP requirements.

Nearby school districts saw failures.

• In White Bear Lake, nine of 17 schools failed to make AYP. The district as a whole also failed.

• In North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale, nine of 14 schools failed to make AYP: The district as a whole failed as well.

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