The more subgroups a school corporation has, the more chances it has of not making No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress.
Warsaw Schools has six subgroups, including overall, white, Hispanic, free and reduced lunch, limited English proficiency and special education, according to Warsaw Schools Director of Assessment Terry Roe. But after failing to meet AYP on ISTEP for about the past four years, Warsaw School Corp. made AYP this year thanks to the 2 percent interim flexibility rule and Safe Harbor.WCS has missed AYP since 2002 and now is under state-mandated corrective actions. If Warsaw makes AYP again next year, Warsaw will not be under the state sanctions. No Child Left Behind requires that each year every public school and school corporation be designated by the Indiana Department of Education to have made AYP or not. Schools must meet AYP not only with total population, but also with any subgroups within the student body.
"Overall, in our corporation, all of our six categories made it," said Roe.
A subgroup must have at least 30 students to be counted as a subgroup, said Roe. One student can be counted in more than one category, such as a white, free and reduced lunch, limited English proficiency student, who also would be counted in the overall group.
"If they pass, it's good for all the categories, if they fail, it's bad for all the categories," Roe said.
Students also need to be enrolled for 162 days in the prior school year to be counted in a building or corporation AYP results. A school is accountable for a student if they attend school for 162 days at that school.
If a student attends another school for 162 days prior to taking ISTEP and is attending Warsaw Schools when he/she takes ISTEP, his/her ISTEP scores for that year will count toward AYP for the prior school. If a student attends Warsaw Schools, but transfers from one school to another within the corporation and is not at one school for 162 days prior to ISTEP, the scores will not count toward any school's AYP, but will count toward the school corporation making AYP.
If a subgroup is preventing a school or corporation from making AYP, the Safe Harbor provision can apply. Under Safe Harbor, Roe said if a school lowers its failure rate by 10 percent, it makes Safe Harbor and that's just as good as making AYP. If a school is way below the failure rate, it can still make AYP if "they're plugging away at the goal," Roe said.
For example, Roe said if a school has a 40 percent passing rate, that means it has a 60 percent failure rate. To make Safe Harbor, it has to decrease its failure rate by 10 percent to a 54 percent failure rate.
Warsaw School Corp. is assessed on all six subgroups. Each subgroup is divided into three levels, Roe said. If just one of the three levels makes AYP, the state then considers the whole group to make AYP.
"That's what happened with our Hispanic population," said Roe. "It gives schools a little bit more of a benefit of the doubt."
In the Hispanic subgroup, the elementary level made AYP, but the middle school and high school levels did not. However, since the elementary level did, the whole group was counted as making AYP, Roe said.
For the special education subgroup, Roe said Warsaw Schools made it because of the 2 percent interim flexibility rule. For the 2 percent rule, the Indiana Department of Education adds 14 to the actual percent of the proficient score of the special education subgroup. If the resulting figure exceeds the state's annual measurable objective, then AYP is met. For English/language on ISTEP, Warsaw special education at the elementary school level had to score 58.2 percent to make AYP, which it didn't with a score of 56.7. However, with the 2 percent rule, Warsaw scored 67.7 percent, beating the 2 percent rule required score of 65.7 percent.
"Special education has kept us from being in AYP the last few years," said Roe. Warsaw was able to make AYP this year with the 2 percent rule. The rule applied to Warsaw Schools last year, too, but Roe said that didn't help Warsaw then.
"From what I understand," Roe said, "very few schools even qualify for the 2 percent rule." Warsaw was able to use it because the corporation was pretty close to making it anyway, he said. "Sometimes you're talking about one or two kids that will decide this."
In the subgroups, Warsaw Schools has 3,873 students it is accountable for in the overall category toward AYP. It is held accountable for 496 Hispanics; 3,263 white students; 1,401 free and reduced lunch students; 468 limited English proficiency; and 525 special education students.
Limited English proficiency is not limited to Spanish. The LEP subgroup "has always made it for the corporation," said Roe. "It has come close, but it has made it."
Attendance and graduation rates also affect a school corporation making AYP. According to information from Dr. Lowell Rose, provided by Roe, "To make AYP, the overall group and every subgroup for which 30 are tested must have performance data permitting a yes answer to four questions." The four questions are: Was the ISTEP goal for students passing met in English? Was it met in math? Did 95 percent of all students in the group take the English test and did 95 percent take the math test?
For high schools, the final question is: Was progress made toward a graduation rate of 95 percent? For all other schools, the final question is: Was progress made toward an attendance rate of 95 percent?
If a school corporation has seven subgroups, and each subgroup must answer yes to each of the different questions to make AYP, Roe said a school corporation has 37 chances to fail.
Of the seven elementary schools in the Warsaw system, Roe said six of them made AYP this year, including Eisenhower, Harrison, Leesburg, Jefferson, Lincoln and Madison. Washington missed it by only one student. Leesburg, Madison and Lincoln are Warsaw's Title I schools. Warsaw School Corp. is considered a Title I corporation because it has Title I schools, and school corporations only face sanctions if they have Title I schools.
Edgewood Middle School also made AYP, but Lakeview Middle School and the high school missed AYP "in multiple categories," said Roe.
For next year, Roe said Warsaw's goal is to make AYP again. Looking at the results of AYP will help Warsaw determine the best way to do that and to service all students.
"We use the results of the subgroups to decide on strategies for improving services for the students not only in those categories but all students," said Roe. "For example, the special education and English language learners make decisions on how to improve their instructional support systems."
