Three local schools lick poor academic rep

The California Department of Education released its 2008-09 school performance scores for both local school districts, and for Barstow Unified School District, Tuesday was a day to celebrate.

Among the highlights, three elementary schools improved their Academic Performance Index scores enough to get their Program Improvement status lifted.

The schools — Crestline, Hinkley and Montara Elementary Schools — all had to show academic improvement for two consecutive years to get out of PI status. The Program Improvement status is a federal sanction and label that often creates a negative reputation, according to Crestline Principal Dave Finch.

“We did it. It’s kind of surreal at the moment,” Finch said. “...We’ve fought the negative connotation of that for a long time.”

Schools in PI status are subject to a variety of intervention activities — tutoring, for example — and get watched more carefully by district officials and the federal government. By law, students living in that school’s boundaries can request to transfer to another school.

In particular, Crestline proved a particularly rare feat by being the first school in the county to exit PI status after being under it for more than five years, according to a county press release. Schools in PI status usually find it harder to escape the title the more that time passes, said Assistant Superintendent Teresa Healy.

Last year BUSD had five sanctioned schools. Now only Barstow Junior High School is in PI status. The other school, Barstow Intermediate School, was closed this year.

While all BUSD schools saw API scores jump in 2008-09, only one additional school, Cameron Elementary School, met the state’s target 800 score on a range from 200 to 1,000. The district as a whole is still in PI status.

For Silver Valley Unified School District, the gains were much slimmer. Half the schools in the district — four out of eight — saw API scores drop. Silver Valley High School maintained the exact same score as the previous year.

SVUSD also saw, for the first time recently, one of its schools placed in PI status. Calico Continuation High School, part of the district’s alternative education center, was placed in its first year of PI, according to a report by the California Department of Education. Assistant Superintendent Aaron Haughton said, however, there may be some discrepancies with the recently released information and said the district will look more closely into Calico’s status. Overall as a district, SVUSD’s API improved five points.

The federal government also keeps tabs on schools using a measure called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) which calculates a school’s scores by looking at API, graduation rate, state test scores and student participation rate in standardized tests.

All elementary schools in BUSD made AYP, however Barstow Junior High, Barstow High, and Central High School did not.

In SVUSD, five schools, including Silver Valley High School, made AYP. Yermo Elementary, Fort Irwin Middle, Silver Valley Academy and Calico Continuation High School did not. Statewide, 51 percent of schools made AYP, which was a one percentage point drop from last year.

For more information, check the California Department of Education Web site at www.cde.ca.gov.

See your school's scores in Wednesday's print version of the Desert Dispatch.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com