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AYP results are not a cause for concern
8/8/2008 12:00 AM

Rosemount Town Pages Editorial
Rosemount Middle School principal Mary Thompson said this week she no longer sees her school’s presence on the list of schools failing to make adequate progress toward state education goals as the black mark she once did. She prefers to look at the progress her school has made rather than agonize over the fact it fell short in one or two others.

Nobody should be proud to be on the state’s AYP list — and every one of the growing number of schools on that list should be working hard to get off of it — but Thompson’s attitude is probably the right one to take. The AYP list and the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests that play a significant role in determining which schools end up on it are tools a school can use to evaluate its performances. They’re particularly high-stakes tools, but they’re still one way among many for schools to figure out whether they’re serving their students well.

And RMS has made progress. Programs put in place to help Hispanic students, a group identified in the past for underperforming, have helped those students do better. Similar programs are in place for the special education students and free and reduced-price lunch students whose performance landed RMS on the AYP list this year, but with schools not getting last year’s results until September it was impossible to put anything into place in time for last year’s students.

Rosemount High School, which a few years ago was identified as one of just 12 10-star schools on state-issued report cards, also made the AYP list.

RHS and RMS are hardly alone. The standards schools had to meet went up this year and there are plenty of well respected schools on the list. According to the department of education, there are more high schools on the list than not, and more than twice as many middle schools.

We should expect our schools to meet the goals that are set out for them. But there is plenty of other evidence to suggest Rosemount’s schools are serving students well.

http://www.rosemounttownpages.com/articles/index.cfm?id=20096&section=Opinion