The Issaquah School District received a copy of it’s students Washington Assessment of Student Learning test results for the final time last week. The district’s scores are consistent with previous years, and well above the state average in every area, but even with impressive scores the district has been added to the federal list of schools around the state which did not make enough Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as laid out by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The act, passed during President George W. Bush’s tenure, aims to hold schools and states accountable for their students, by using state standardized tests as a measure of student progress. Districts which fail to meet these benchmarks are added to the AYP sanction list, which can result in district penalties if schools fail to meet standards for multiple years. While most agree the law has the best of intentions, the way it is put into practice and the various ways it measures how standards are meet has caused many districts, including Issaquah and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to question the results.

“I hope that no person in our school community takes the AYP designations as a realistic measure of the high-quality learning that is occurring in our schools,” said Dr. Steve Rasmussen, Issaquah School District superintendent, in a press release. “While a terrific indicator of those areas that we must improve in our system, AYP has some significant flaws that create a no-win situation for schools and students.”

Under the law, every year there must be a growing percentage of students who pass the reading and math WASL tests. All subgroups, such as racial, economic and programmatic, must meet also meet the yearly standards or a district is not considered to have met AYP. After two years of failing to make AYP, sanctions are put on a district if it receives Title 1 funding, funds designed to help struggling students. The issue many districts have with the AYP standards is the necessary marks which must be met increase every year, with the intent of pushing schools to make sure all students are passing.

In the Issaquah district students who made WASL progress, but did not meet AYP included students in these areas: elementary special education reading and math, elementary low income reading, middle school special education reading and math. At Issaquah High School students in the low income subgroup did not meet math AYP standards and Tiger Mountain Community High School failed to meet the graduation rate requirement. A list of which specific schools in Issaquah that did not meet AYP can be found on the District’s Web site. Issaquah is not the only district in the area to miss AYP standards. Schools in Bellevue, Lake Washington, Northshore and Renton also were included on the list of 1,073 schools which were added to the list this year, up from the 618 based on 2007-08 WASL scores. The majority of district’s which did met AYP standards in 2008 are for the most part smaller districts, with the local exception of Mercer Island.

“Our state testing scores are flat, yet the federal system shows an additional 500 schools are failing,” said Randy Dorn, the state’s superintendent of instruction in a press release. “What is failing is No Child Left Behind. The law is completely unfair. While we know there is certainly room for improvement in our schools, it’s a statistical guarantee in this law that all of our schools will soon be in federal improvement status. That’s unrealistic. What is wrong with the law is that it is punitive and statistically impossible to succeed. We have high standards, and under NCLB you get penalized for that.”

Students in Issaquah did have a good showing on the WASL this spring, increasing the scores in third-grade math, fifth-grade reading, as well as middle school reading and math and in 10th-grade reading. Passing the reading and math portions of the WASL are required to graduate, and next spring the new state proficiency test will replace the WASL.

“The intent of the law is commendable,” said Jerry Miller, director of instructional support for the district. “It’s a measurement system that asks us to look beyond averages to make sure every student is learning. But there are several mandates in the law itself that do not make common sense.”

The district cites that APY requires every student to meet the same testing points at the same time, including students who are English Language Learners and those in special-education, two groups which are in those programs because they have special learning requirements. The district points out if those students could regularly meet the learning targets they would not be in a specialized program. Miller said it’s not a surprise those students are identified as not making AYP.

Another problem is that if one area of students does not meet the standard, the whole school and even district automatically fails to meet AYP. The district said that Cascade Ridge Elementary did not meet the AYP standards because too few students in the special-education reading program showed improvement. This is the same school which was nominated earlier in the year for the federal Blue Ribbon Award which honors outstanding achievement.

Issaquah historically does well on WASL, earning top scores compared to the state average, and fares well with other districts in the area. For example, this year’s third-grade Issaquah math results showed 86.3 percent of students passing the test, compared to the state average of just 66.3 students passing the same test. At the high school level, when the test counts toward earning a diploma, 93 percent of Issaquah students passed the reading exam, with 80.9 percent of the state’s students doing the same and 72.5 percent of Issaquah’s 10th-graders passed the math exam, while the state average was 42.5 percent.

This is the first year ISD has been on the AYP list of not making standards. After two years of not meeting the targets, districts are sanctioned by the government, in the hopes of turning those scores around. Currently, no district in Washington is beyond step two of five in the federal program. Schools which don’t meet AYP for two years are identified and must tell parents of the status, and receive technical assistance to enhance performance. These schools may get federal money for school improvement and they must develop or revise a school improvement plan. Schools must also give parents the option of transferring the student to a different school, not on the AYP sanction list, and those parents may ask the district to pay for transportation.

In step two, schools that don’t make enough progress for three years, must also give students the option of attending a different district, and give parents the chance to request a Supplemental Educational Service, like tutoring. In steps three through five, which includes schools that don’t make AYP for four through six years, the sanctions get continually tougher, including replacing staff, putting new curriculum’s in place and at the very last stage, replace all staff and contract with an outside entity to run the school.

For more information visit the Issaquah School District’s Web site.