FARMINGTON -- Ensuring that every student passes the end-of-year assessment testing may not be a realistic goal, Davis School District officials said.
District officials met with media Monday afternoon to discuss the 2009-10 Adequate Yearly Progress Reports.
"Is it realistic that every school have 100 percent of its students proficient (by 2014)? No," said Superintendent Dr. Bryan Bowles. "Not every school in the nation will pass."
Overall, Davis School District did not pass the AYP categories set under the federal No Child Left Behind program for the 2009-10 school year. For grades three through eight, it did not pass students at an adequate level in language arts in several subcategories. Those categories include African-American, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities. It did pass in 36 other categories in those grade levels.
It also did not pass in language arts and math in the 10th- through 12th-grade levels in four categories. Those include language arts and math, Hispanic and limited English proficient students.
The majority of Davis district schools combined did pass the AYP requirements for 2009-10: 46 of its elementary schools, 13 junior high schools and four high schools.
Schools are required to meet standards set for testing participation, academic achievement in language arts and math, and school attendance. The goal of NCLB is to have all students in the country performing at grade level in reading and math by the year 2014. To reach that goal, tests get progressively more difficult, and the benchmark gets higher on the percentage of students who have to pass.
To score at the proficient level in 2009-10 in language arts, students had to score 83 percent, while in math students had to pass at a 45 percent level.
Antelope Elementary and Fremont Elementary schools were identified two weeks ago as among eight Title I schools statewide that did not achieve adequate yearly progress for the second year in a row. Parents were notified about options, as well as what the schools plan to do to improve, Bowles said.
The schools will each receive $200,000 over the next two years to spend on programs to improve students' reading and math.
But 10 other elementary schools also did not meet the AYP standards for the 2009-2010 school year, officials said. Those schools are Doxey, King, Mountain View, Reading, South Clearfield, Sunset, Vae View, Valley View, West Bountiful and Woods Cross.
If a school lists just one "No" in any of the 40 categories, it does not meet AYP standards, said Logan Toone, the district's director of research and assessment.
For example, Reading Elementary in Centerville did not meet the criteria to pass students with disabilities in language arts, but it passed in 39 of the other categories.
Fairfield Junior High and North Davis Junior High schools did not pass all of the AYP categories nor did Bountiful, Clearfield, Layton and Syracuse high schools.
Newsweek listed Bountiful High School as one of the 1,000 top high schools to attend this year, said Christopher Williams. But because of one "No" checked off among the 40 AYP categories, the school was listed among those that did not meet the federal guideline mark.
"That 'No' is something we need to look at," Bowles said.
At Bountiful, students with disabilities did not pass the language arts academic achievement with their chronological-age peers, he said.
Bountiful High School has a learning center for students who are intellectually disabled, Bowles said.
"Should they be expected to perform at the same level as their peers?" Bowles said.
He said he knows there may be some parents who will want to remove those students from the school so it can achieve AYP this year.
But the small percentage of disabled students at the school gives the rest of the student population a chance to serve, he said.
"We won't move them," he said.
"If I were the king, I would take the kids who are disabled, review their current (individual education plan) and check to see if those goals are being met," Bowles said. "That's a better measurement on how the school is doing."
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