Anchorage schools' test scores down, graduation rate up

In the 2008-09 academic year, the number of students passing proficiency tests in language arts declined to 80 percent from 81 percent the year before.

The number of students passing proficiency in math declined to 71 from 74 percent the year before.

But school administrators were cheered by a graduation rate that climbed to 69 percent from 65 percent.

Anchorage public schools have struggled with their graduation rates for years. The rate is a measure of how many teens earn a diploma after four years of high school. Some students take an extra year to graduate and they are not included in calculating the graduation rate. But most who don't graduate simply drop out.

School administrators were starting to look at the data this week, and staff will be spending the rest of August and most of September analyzing it, said Superintendent Carol Comeau. Understanding the deficiencies will help administrators know where to focus, she said.

Each year, the district releases the Adequate Yearly Progress results to comply with the federally mandated No Child Left Behind law. The controversial law puts pressure on schools and teachers to have all students up to grade-level proficiency by 2014. It is unpopular with many educators because schools with more challenged kids -- learning-disabled, English language learners, low-income -- are graded on the same scale as schools with more advantaged kids.

Repeated failures lead to school closures, under the law. No Anchorage schools are facing that this year.

The Adequate Yearly Progress data matters to parents because it reveals how many students in their children's school are passing state tests. But it also matters because poor test scores in schools with a majority of economically disadvantaged students means the district has to step in and offer measures such as tutoring for kids and school choices for parents.

In the upcoming school year, because of current or previous failures, eight schools will have to offer free tutoring for kids, and 11 schools will have to offer students transportation to another neighborhood school.

Three schools are new this year on the list of those having to offer transportation: Airport Heights Elementary, Lake Otis Elementary, and Clark Middle School.

For a list of how all the schools performed, go to www.asdk12.org/NCLB/AYP.

School Board president John Steiner said he was awaiting the statewide data before he saw significance in the slight decline in test scores. If all students in Alaska did worse, maybe the tests were harder, he said.

Comeau also speculated the district's influx of English language learners and children from Bush Alaska might have affected the scores. Last year, the district, which is becoming more diverse every year, got a surge of Somali and Hmong refugees, for example. She said that by testing time, 1,200 of the district's 50,000 students were Hmong.

"Don't get me wrong, though. I'm concerned," she said of the lower scores.

But while she was lamenting those, she was celebrating the district's improved graduation rate.

The district has been trying new tactics for years to stem the problem. They've created smaller learning environments in high schools. They've increased summer school opportunities for kids to make up credits. And last year, the district hired "graduation coaches" in the high schools to supplement the job of guidance counselors. The coaches target kids on the brink of dropping out.

But another factor in the increased rate might be the result of more precise counting. In recent years, school administrators have put more effort toward finding out what happens to students who stop showing up for school. While previously they would be counted as dropouts, now if the district finds that the teen has moved from Anchorage or joined a private school or decided to homeschool, he no longer counts as a dropout.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.