City’s elementary schools outpace middle and high school in state school classifications

By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The latest round of state school classifications are out and local elementary schools continue to outpace the middle school and high school in meeting state targets for student performance.

The results also show little change in longstanding achievement disparities between the state’s more affluent suburban districts and urban school systems like Woonsocket, Pawtucket and Central Falls.
The School Committee has yet to receive a report on the latest state findings, but School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois said he expects the administration will be providing the panel with an overview at either the upcoming Aug. 27 meeting or the panel’s meeting in September.
To a degree, Dubois said he was not surprised by the news that the high school and middle are continuing to have difficulty in meeting targets for special education or English as a Second Language students given the state’s testing system makes no accommodation for differences between student groups other than for profoundly disabled.
The high school missed two of it 21 targets, both for students with disabilities in Math and English Language Arts exams. The school did not meet the state’s requirement for the percentage of students taking the test, a statewide standard of 95 percent. The state found 90.7 percent of the high schools students with disabilities participated in the English Language Arts testing and 92.8 percent of the students with disabilities took the Math testing.
The middle school missed one of 31 targets, also for students with disabilities taking the Math testing.
The missed target problem is most apparent when the results for urban districts with higher numbers of such students are compared to those of better performing suburban districts with fewer special needs students, according to Dubois.
“It’s just not fair when you test someone newly immigrated into the country and they can’t read English,” Dubois said. “If they do poorly on the test it reflects poorly on the school.”
Dubois said he and school officials such as former Superintendent of Schools Maureen Macera have gone to state Department of Education meetings to voice concern about the need for GAP testing “but nothing has changed.”
That concern aside, Dubois said the district has been working with the state under its Progressive, Support and Intervention status to make changes in the set-up of the middle school other local programs to address the testing result shortfalls.
That process will continue in the future, he added.
“We have a plan in place and if it has to be altered we will work with them and made any changes that are needed,” he said.
The findings for local schools, available from the Department of Education’s Website list the longstanding high performing school Globe Park Elementary among the schools on caution status along with Bernon Heights Elementary for missing two targets, and Kevin K. Coleman Elementary, and Citizens Memorial Elementary, with a second year of missing targets, was listed as making insufficient progress in the results.
Globe Park missed two of 15 targets, both in English Language Arts for Students with Disabilities and Economically Disadvantaged Students.  Coleman missed targets for English Language Learners in Math and for Students with Disabilities in English Language Arts. Citizens missed Math targets for all students, Hispanic students, Students with Disabilities and Economically Disadvantaged Students, and Bernon Heights missed targets for Students with Disabilities for both English Language Arts and Math.
The good news for the district included a Regents commendation for the Leo A. Savoie Elementary School for meeting its annual yearly progress targets as did the Gov. Aram J. Pothier, and Edward Harris elementary schools.
While announcing the results of testing in mathematics, reading and writing completed statewide in the past school year on Tuesday, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri noted three of four of the state’s 223 public schools, 73 percent, met all of the 2007-08 targets set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The number of schools meeting all their targets represented a drop from 80 percent in the previous year, according the Department of Education, a slight decline likely resulting from the move to raise annual targets by several points this year.
Overall test scores improved in most grade levels despite the higher standards, according to the state.
“I am very pleased that the majority of schools met all the new test targets,” Carcieri said in a statement on the results. “While there are schools still working to accomplish that goal, the testing shows our education system is on the right track to prepare our students for the world of the future and not the past,” Carcieri said.
 While nearly 75 percent of the state’s public schools are meeting their annual targets, Robert G. Flanders, Jr., Esq., Chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, said he remains concerned that “less than half our high schools met all of their targets, and I expect that the new diploma system will help ensure that all our graduates reach proficiency.”
The state also noted the disparities between the urban and suburban districts where only 41 percent of the urban schools met all their targets as opposed to the 85 percent of suburban school meeting all targets.
“The school classifications that the Governor released today once again show that there are two Rhode Islands,” Commissioner of Education Peter McWalters said of the results. “Our suburban schools are performing well, but less than half of our urban schools met all of their annual targets,” he said. “We must continue to focus our school-reform efforts and investments on improvements in our urban districts.”
Under the latest results, according to the Department of Education, of the 81 schools that missed one or more of their annual targets, 23 schools, or 8 percent, missed targets for the first time and were listed as “Caution” schools. The state noted that schools missing targets for repeated years, 58 schools or 19 percent, are classified as making “insufficient progress,” a category for which the state could impose sanctions such as the implementation of a corrective action plan or state ordered restructuring.