Mount Vernon News

MOUNT VERNON — Along with all the districts in the area, the Mount Vernon City Schools are celebrating the 2007-08 school year report card. The district as a whole met 25 of 30 state indicators, reached a performance index score of 96 out of a possible 120, and was designated effective.

Middle school students and staff are especially elated. For the first time since 2002, the middle school student body earned an effective designation on the school report card. Principal Bill White said everyone, students and staff, has worked extremely hard to accomplish that goal and all are to be congratulated. “What we do is probably no different than what other schools do,” he said. “We just have a talented staff with a variety of experiences. They work well with kids and they work well together. Everyone comes together to make sure we reach every child, because if students have someone to relate to, they do better academically.”

For the sixth time, Wiggin Street Elementary received an excellent rating on the school report cards. Lynn Riggenbach, principal, said everyone is very proud of meeting 10 out of 10 indicators, demonstrating adequate yearly progress, and earning a performance index score of 99.3. “Everyone worked very hard,” she said. “We do try to keep it in perspective, though. It’s just one test. A student might do better than expected on that particular test day, and another may not do as well as expected.”

Riggenbach said the report card data are used to evaluate the instructional programs’ strengths, and to assist with goal setting for both the school and the individual child. “We use the information to decide how to do the best for our children while at the same time trying to meet the state’s expectations,” she said.

The other schools’ results are as follows. Columbia Elementary, effective, met six of 10 indicators, scored 94.6 out of 120 points and met AYP. Dan Emmett Elementary, effective, met six of 10 indicators, scored 95.3 points and met AYP. East Elementary, effective, met nine of 10 indicators, scored 96.7 points and met AYP. Pleasant Street Elementary, effective, met 7 out of 10 indicators, scored 96 points and met AYP. Twin Oak, effective, met nine of 10 indicators, scored 97 points and met AYP. The middle school met six of 10 indicators, scored 94.4 points and met AYP. The high school, continuous improvement, met 12 out of 12 indicators, scored 98.2 points and did not meet AYP.

“As a district,” Superintendent Steve Short said, “we are pleased with the results. Our being pleased, though, is also tempered with thinking, ‘Where do we go from here and what will next year’s report card look like?’ I think there are a lot of things to celebrate, and I think there are also some things we need to work on.”

One of those objectives is to make sure every child is getting the instruction he or she needs to succeed. The district as a whole did not show adequate yearly progress for all subgroups of students and is now in what is called School Improvement Year 2. (The subgroups are specified in order to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.) Improvement year 2, Short explained, means the district needs to focus more efforts on subgroups, specifically the special education population and economically disadvantaged pupils.

That actually is one advantage of the district report card, according to Short. “The value of the report card to me,” he said, “is it makes us really take a look and reflect on what we do. It makes you reflect on what you’re teaching and how you’re teaching. We’re more focused now on every kid. Every kid counts and that’s the way it should be.”

The achievement of students in the subgroups relates to whether the school met the federal adequate yearly progress requirement. For example, Mount Vernon High School and Wiggin Street Elementary were the only two schools that got a perfect score on the performance indicators. They also received the highest performance index scores in the district, and one, Wiggin Street, met AYP and one, the high school, did not. That has to do with the number of students in certain subgroups in the school. The elementary schools may not have the minimum number (30) to “count” a certain group, while the high school has those students who came from all the elementary schools, increasing the numbers and including that group in the high school’s report.

Although Wiggin Street is one of the elementary buildings that does not have enough students to be “counted” in each federally designated subgroup, Riggenbach said she and her staff use the report card data to look at those children who will be in a (countable) subgroup at the middle school. “We want to make sure we are doing everything we can to help them become proficient in everything before they get to the middle school,” she said.

A new piece of data included on this year’s report cards is something called value added. Short said that term refers to the progress students make throughout the school year. The expectation is for each student to make a year’s worth of progress, no matter where he starts the year — at, below or above grade level. “Now the emphasis is on the whole child, each and every child,” Short said. “Value added is going to make us look more closely at what we do — how we present material and differentiate instruction. Are we providing things for kids who struggle, but not yet reaching the kids that are at the top? What can we do to make sure each student achieves that yearly growth according to that standard?

“And this standard is a snapshot of a day. This grade card is a snapshot of a week. It’s a snapshot of what took place on that (test) day at that moment and there are so many variables that go into that snapshot of a day. ... Our principals got preliminary data in June, and they were working on these things already before they left at the end of June, looking at what the scores were, looking at what they missed, looking at what they need to do. Teachers were also reviewing the information.”

Short said helping kids to succeed is a team effort. “The elementary sets the foundation. When you build anything, you want a strong solid foundation. At the elementary level we have been implementing literacy collaborative, and will expand it to grades three, four and five. We hope that as we provide that foundation we are going to see success and we’re going to see continued improvement in our reading scores. So much of the test is reading and understanding. You look at the math and it is all story problems, so you have to go though the reading process with math, and social studies and science as well as reading. That foundation carries over into the middle school, and I hope to see our high school benefiting from improvement at the middle school. It’s a total team concept.”

The report cards also provide information to community members. It gives data on things like ACT scores, graduation rates, the number of graduates with honors diplomas and other information about the school district.

If any one has questions about the district report card, or would like clarification, Short suggested calling Director of Teaching and Learning Lynda Weston, the student’s building principal or Short himself.