The two public schools in the Vance County system that have drawn sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind accountability program are among the schools that showed the most improvement under the state ABCs of Public Education ratings, according to data released by the state Department of Public Instruction on Thursday.
In the three years that the federal government has measured schools’ adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward the goal of all children being rated proficient on all end-of-year exams by 2014, only Aycock Elementary and Henderson Middle have been forced to allow Vance students to transfer to another school. The school-choice options, in effect for the year starting Aug. 15, are Pinkston Street Elementary and Eaton-Johnson Middle School.
The data the state Board of Education approved for release Thursday showed that Aycock met AYP for 2004-05, but it remains under the school-choice sanction until it meets the federal standard for consecutive years. Henderson Middle, which has never made AYP, falls under the school-choice option for the first time.
Meanwhile, E.M. Rollins and Pinkston Street elementary schools, which achieved AYP in 2003-04, missed their marks in 2004-05. Rollins missed four of 21 targets, and Pinkston Street missed two of 13 standards. The other eight elementary schools made AYP.
Among the secondary schools, only Western Vance High School made AYP. It is judged differently and has only three AYP goals because it is an alternative school and has a small student body.
But in the world of school testing and accountability, the story is never that simple. Even though the federal and state ratings are based on the same test results, the judgments can be far different.
For example, Southern Vance and Northern Vance high schools didn’t come close to meeting AYP, as Southern achieved 11 of 19 goals and Northern reached 13 of 17. But under the state’s system, both are Schools of Progress and met high growth, meaning the same students measured from year to year improved more than expected.
Overall, the portion of students taking end-of-course tests at Northern who were rated proficient — scoring a 3 or 4 on the tests — increased from 59.6 percent in 2003-04 to 62.5 percent. At Southern, the increase was from 56.8 percent to 60.3 percent.
Two elementary schools also achieved high ABCs growth: New Hope, which rose from 85.6 percent proficient in 2003-04 to 88.4 percent in 2004-05; and L.B. Yancey, which improved from 80.6 percent to 81.4 percent.
All of the other elementary schools met expected growth under the state system, even though four of them had a lower percentage of pupils proficient in 2004-05 than in 2003-04: Dabney, down to 88.7 percent from 89.3 percent; E.M. Rollins, down to 77.0 percent from 77.7 percent; E.O. Young, down to 81.5 percent from 84.6 percent; and Zeb Vance, which fell from a county-high 90.2 percent, good for the designation of Honor School of Excellence, to 83.8 percent. E.M. Rollins and Zeb Vance had new principals in 2004-05.
On the other hand, Pinkston Street improved from 74.1 percent to 76.1 percent, Clark Street from 71.8 percent to 73.7 percent, Carver from 84.0 percent to 87.3 percent, and Aycock from 83.0 percent to 88.0 percent. So parents in the Aycock school district have a choice of moving their children to Pinkston Street or keeping them in the elementary school that had the biggest improvement, 5 percentage points, and was less than 1 point below the top percentage for any of the schools in the county system.
Complicating matters a bit more are the two middle schools, neither of which met expected growth last year. But Eaton-Johnson and Henderson middle schools boosted their results better than any other school: Eaton-Johnson rose from 70.5 percent proficient to 77.8 percent, and Henderson Middle jumped from 67.1 percent to 73.9 percent.
The middle schools have always lagged the performance of the elementary schools under the ABCs program, but in 2004-05 Henderson Middle had a higher proficiency rating than Clark Street Elementary, and Eaton-Johnson beat Clark Street, E.M. Rollins and Pinkston Street.
Statewide, 69 percent of schools met expected or high growth; 87 percent of Vance schools did so.
The local public school with the best overall 2004-05 performance under the federal and state accountability systems is Vance Charter School, which is outside the control of Schools Superintendent Norm Shearin and the Vance Board of Education.
Vance Charter improved from 93.5 percent proficient in 2003-04 to 93.6 percent in 2004-05, and it was credited with achieving high growth. The school met all of its AYP goals, and the state named Vance Charter an Honor School of Excellence again.
Of the more than 90 charter schools operating in North Carolina, Vance Charter had the 16th-best proficiency rating, and it was sixth among charter schools that serve children from kindergarten through at least eighth grade.