The 2011 Adequate Yearly Progress report for Pottsgrove High School

POTTSTOWN PA – Frustration and anger over the Pottsgrove School District‘s inability to significantly increase proficiency in reading and math skills among its high school students boiled to the top of the district Board of School Directors‘ meeting Tuesday (Oct. 11, 2011).

“At the end of the day we’ve made no stinking progress,” Director Fred Remelius grumbled, giving voice to feelings that – as observers looked around the board tables – seemed to be held by several of his colleagues. Remelius argued that a heavy investment of taxpayer dollars into fixing the problem had yielded too few results.

At least one administrator, Assistant Superintendent Shellie Feola, countered that what the district really needed was more time – possibly several more years – to make those investments pay off. “It takes five to seven years to turn a district around,” she said. However, the district has only three years, until 2014, to meet government requirements or face penalties.

The focus of board complaints was the 2011 report of adequate yearly progress (AYP) among the district’s five schools, the federal and state measurement of how well or poorly students are being educated as defined by the “No Child Left Behind” Act.

As a district, Pottsgrove met AYP targets during 2011 and 2010, even though two schools this year received warning notices, and the high school was flagged as more problematic

The district met its 2011 AYP targets overall (see graphic above), as it also did during 2010, for student attendance, test participation, and graduation rates. However, it lagged in academic performance ratings that determine students’ ability to read and do math at higher-than-minimum levels of understanding.

This year’s results have been available since July, but did not become part of the board’s public discussion until Tuesday night. They show  (click on text links below for individual schools’ results):

• Ringing Rocks and West Pottsgrove elementary schools met federal and state AYP targets;
• Lower Pottsgrove Elementary and Pottsgrove Middle School did not meet their goals and received warning notices; and
• Pottsgrove Senior High both failed to meet its goals and was flagged as a school in need of substantial improvement.

“That’s just not acceptable in the real world,” Remelius said of the high school results. “And I think our problem is that we’ve set no high level of expectation that students must do well.” Some Pottsgrove teachers, he claimed as an example, failed to enforce homework deadlines and created a student culture of indifference to education. “We’ve got to change that culture or we’ll never move off the dime here,” Remelius added.

“We’ve been hearing about this for a long time,” Director April Kontostathis said of the statistics, “and before we buy another laptop computer or overhead projector, we’ve got to be sure our teachers know how to teach reading and math. I think we’ve been trying to take on too much at one time,” she said, advocating a back-to-basics approach.

“It’s not as though we’ve been doing nothing,” district Superintendent Dr. Bradley Landis replied. “We’ve made some significant progress,” he said, in improving academic performance among Pottsgrove subgroups that AYP reports showed to have learning difficulties: those in special education classes, economically disadvantaged students, and non-Hispanic African-American students.

Still, the high school AYP measurements for 2011 show the student body as a whole did not meet academic performance levels in either reading or math. Moreover, math performance among non-Hispanic whites and blacks alike also fell below goal.

“Where we’ve put our money for the last three years has not given us what we were expecting,” Landis acknowledged, “but it hasn’t been for naught.”

Related (regarding academic performance at Pottsgrove):

• Poor Math, Reading At Pottsgrove High Frustrates Board
• State Says Pottsgrove Schools Make ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’
• Pottsgrove Teachers Review District Accountability Plan
• School Board Criticizes Lack of Students’ Improvement
• Notebook Worthy For March 23, 2009
• Pottsgrove Tops Many In Science, But …

Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ Oct. 11 meeting):

• Poor Math, Reading At Pottsgrove High Frustrates Board