Lawrence public schools have been successful in making progress toward meeting a a federal mandate of having 100 percent of students proficient in reading and math by 2014.

District assessment specialists Terry McEwen and Cherie Nicholson went over a report outlining how schools did on the state assessments this year during Monday’s board meeting. The assessments are used to measure progress in meeting the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

“Things are looking bright, but the work isn’t done,” McEwen said. “But we’re starting in a good place.”

McEwen clarified that the information was preliminary. Final numbers from the Kansas State Department of Education won’t be available until October.

“But I would say 99 percent of what is in front of you is not going to change,” McEwen said. “Any changes will be minor.”

The report is an excellent reflection of progress, said board member Sue Morgan.

She noted that students aren’t just becoming proficient but moving through the ranks to receiving advanced or exemplary scores.

“We’re not where we want to be and have work to do,” Morgan said. “But what we want to see is continuous movement. We want to see students improving consistently over time.”

Overall, board members seemed pleased with the report and said the faculty and staff members had done an excellent job.

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The gains made in the test scores show that everybody has been concentrating on progressing, said board president Leni Salkind.

“We wouldn’t see these kinds of successes otherwise,” she 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.

Five elementary schools – Broken Arrow, Deerfield, Hillcrest, Langston Hughes and New York – also didn’t have a single student with an unsatisfactory on the math assessment.

Board members did have issues with Lawrence High School not making enough progress in reading according to test scores. Several said they thought it was unfair for the school to have such as ranking.

Test scores improved overall at the school and while making progress, students with disabilities didn’t make quite enough based on state requirements.

“This really bothers me because the students have a variety of needs,” board member Austin Turney said. “This seems to be a problem with adequate yearly progress because it’s comparing apples to oranges to peaches to plums.

Lawrence Supt. Randy Weseman said the performance of LHS was good.

“I’m not making excuses, but people need to look over the progress in the long run,” he said.