Schools catching up to standard

One LHS student group fails to make 'adequate yearly progress'

State educational assessments have been bittersweet this year for Lawrence High School principal Steve Nilhas.

One group of students at the school didn’t make quite enough improvement on its reading score, causing LHS to miss “adequate yearly progress” in reading.

“Probably the most disappointing part about it this year is if four or five more students had tested proficient or above, we would have gotten there,” Nilhas said.

The progress measure is how the federal government determines whether schools, districts and states are meeting goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires all public school students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

But LHS did make strides. Last year, five different groups had caused the high school not to make adequate yearly progress in reading or math.

And across the district, gains were made in both areas, according to preliminary data.

“Everyone has worked very hard,” Supt. Randy Weseman said.

Districtwide, 71.8 percent of students performed at levels of proficient and above in reading. That was a slight gain from last year, when 71.3 percent of students were performing at proficient or above.

Improvement in math proficiency was much greater. This year, 70.8 percent of Lawrence students performed at proficient or better. Last year, it was 63.4 percent.

District officials will report on the state assessments to the Lawrence school board at 7 p.m. Monday at the district office, 110 McDonald Drive.

“It’s obvious we have some achievement gains, particularly in mathematics, for which our staff, students and parents can be very proud,” Weseman said.

The achievement was enough that it earned 10 schools bragging rights to meeting the state’s “standard of excellence” based on the assessments.

Deerfield and Quail Run elementary schools received the title for reading and math scores. Broken Arrow, Hillcrest, Langston Hughes, New York, Pinckney, Schwegler, Sunset Hill and Free State High School earned the designation for their math scores.

Other schools that had problems making sufficient annual progress last year managed to improve their scores. Those included FSHS and Central and South junior high schools.

Central principal Ted Juneau said he was proud of the gains the school had made. It was an effort of the staff to make sure students did their best on the assessments, he said.

“What we do know is that we can’t relax,” he said. “I feel confident our staff won’t do that.”