Sunday, Aug. 08, 2010

Wake test gains get mixed reaction

92 percent of county's schools met or exceeded growth goals last year

Rising school test scores in Wake County and statewide are being met with both praise and skepticism.

New test results released Thursday show that 92 percent of Wake's schools met or exceeded state growth expectations this past school year. That's up from 89 percent the year before.

Additionally, 49.7 percent of Wake's schools had both passing rates on state exams of at least 80 percent and met growth goals. That's up from 40 percent the year before.

"Following the trend line, we're seeing increases over time," said David Holdzkom, the school system's assistant superintendent for evaluation and research. "That's a good thing."

Passing rates and the number of schools meeting growth goals also increased across the state. This was the first year that retests were counted on state end-of-course tests typically given to high school students. Retests have been counted for end-of-grade tests given in elementary and middle schools for the past two years.

The validity of the gains was questioned by Terry Stoops, an education policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based conservative think tank. The Locke Foundation has been a long-time critic of the states' testing program, noting how several highly publicized errors over the years have caused scores to fluctuate.

"The increases tell me more about the state's testing program than about what the students are doing," Stoops said.

Wake school administrators defended the testing program, particularly allowing retests to count.

"When you have a youngster whose score is not where it should be, you should be able to test the youngster again," Holdzkom said.

Tina Hoots, principal of Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, said students still need to know the material to pass a retest. She said there are a number of students who know the material but who may not pass the first time because of test anxiety.

With the retests, Wake Forest-Rolesville had a passing rate of 85.8 percent, up from 76.7 percent the previous year. But Hoots said the passing rate would still have been over 80 percent without the retests.

Despite the gains, this will be the second straight year in which no bonuses will be issued to teachers and teacher assistants at schools that made growth expectations. The state legislature didn't fund the bonuses becuase of the tight economy.

Bonuses of as much as $1,500 have been awarded in the past to teachers at schools that exceed growth goals. The goals are based on a formula which calculates how well students should do at a school.

"Our bonus is the success of the students," Hoots said. "I don't think there are many who are in this for the money."

Wake's latest test results show that most of the top schools in the district are in the western part of the county. Thirteen of the 14 schools in the district with passing rates above 90 percent were in western Wake.

The highest performing Raleigh and northern Wake schools were largely charter schools, which are independent of the school system.

At Quest Academy in North Raleigh, 100 percent of the charter school's students passed last school year.

The only Raleigh school in the district with a passing rate above 90 percent was the Wake Early College of Health and Science, a countywide magnet school in East Raleigh.

The results could add more fuel to the Wake school system's ongoing fight over maintaining diversity in schools. The new school board majority scrapped the decades-old diversity policy in favor of a new plan, still being developed, to send children to schools closer to their communities.

Supporters of the old diversity policy say neighborhood schools will result in extremely high poverty schools, which typically have lower student performance. Supporters of the new board's direction argue that families will benefit from greater stability and choice when they can go to schools in their community.

None of the 14 district schools with passing rates above 90 percent had a large low-income population. All were below the districtwide average of 31 percent of students receiving federally subsidized lunches.

Only a handful of Title I schools, those which receive federal funding because of their poverty levels, had passing rates above 80 percent. The highest performing Title I school was Dillard Drive Elementary in Raleigh, near the border with Cary, where 89.2 percent of students passed state exams last school year.

Sylvia Wilkins, principal of Dillard Drive Elementary, credited the school's success to aggressive use of data and the professionalism of the staff.

"I'm proud of the fact that we're the seventh highest performing elementary school in Wake because we do have a high free-and-reduced-price lunch population," Wilkins said.

Critics of the board majority have warned that Wake could become like the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, which has seen a sharp increase in the number of high-poverty schools since the district abandoned busing for diversity in 2002.

But Stoops pointed to how low-income students have a higher passing rate in Charlotte than Wake.

"There's a lot that Wake could learn from Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, and not just neighborhood schools," Stoops said.