Royal Oak Schools Fall Short of Meeting AYP as State Identifies New School Designations

Today the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) released its school report cards, which includes the list of schools meeting state standards through Adequate Yearly Progress. And among the schools that need improvement are Royal Oak Middle School and Addams Elementary in Royal Oak.

Both are listed as "focus schools" - a new designation from the state - meaning they have large achievement gaps between the top 30 percent of students and the bottom 30 percent.

Royal Oak among districts failing AYP

While most schools in the district passed AYP, the Royal Oak School District as a whole did not, failing to meet standards in math and reading, according to the MDE.

It is among a surprising list of southeast Michigan school districts that have gone from a passing AYP designation a year ago to failing today. In total, 262 districts (48 percent) statewide did not make AYP, compared to 37 (6.7 percent) last year. At the school building level, 82 percent of schools made AYP across the state, compared to 79 percent last year.

"The school grades, rankings, and labels released today are primarily based on data from state tests, much of it being data that was an assessment of learning from the 2010-2011 school year," said Superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin in a press release. "Data on student learning, including state test scores, but also district defined assessment data and classroom based formative achievement measures are critically important to us. We have been and continue to use such data to improve learning for all students, which is our core mission."

The increase of schools not making AYP is due in part to the now used on the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) and MME (Michigan Merit Exam) tests. In addition, the state now factors graduation rates for all students into the calculations and also now includes the achievement of certain student populations who previously may have not been counted.

In the past, districts only needed to meet AYP targets at one of three levels - elementary, middle and high school. Now, they are required to meet them at all three.

Jan Ellis, a spokeswoman for the MDE, said this year's designations put a focus on the achievement gaps between students and really tries to highlight the need for all students to achieve success.

"The goal is to have all students proficient, not just some," she said, adding that in the past there was the ability to mask poor student peformance because the focus was on those students who were doing really well.

Royal Oak High School and Churchill Community Education Center were two schools within the Royal Oak district to not make AYP.

It is important to note there are over 60 factors that determine whether a school district makes AYP or not.

"It is binary system, in which a failure to meet standards in one out of sixty factors can result in a not meeting AYP designation," Lewis-Lakin said in the release. "Our failure to make AYP is based on just one of those 60 factors."

New school designations

While AYP was designed to measure student achievement as required by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the , received last month, frees Michigan from following some of the NCLB rules.

As a result of the waiver, the MDE has identified three new school designations: reward schools, priority schools and focus schools. Not every school fits into one of these categories.

Reward Schools: The top five percent of all Michigan schools in the annual top-to-bottom ranking and the top five percent making the greatest academic progress over the past four years. None were in Royal Oak.

Priority Schools: Previously called persistently lowest achieving schools, these are now identified as those in the bottom five percent of the annual top-to-bottom ranking and any high school with a graduation rate of less than 60 percent for three consecutive years. There were 146 priority schools identified this year. These schools will be required to come up with a plan to improve. 

Focus Schools: The 10 percent of schools with the widest achievement gaps, meaning the academic disparity between the top 30 percent of students and the bottom 30 percent. That list includes 358 schools, many who in the past would be considered high-achieving. The schools are now charged with bridging the gap.

"The Focus Schools label is new. The state began to share information about it only yesterday," Lewis-Lakin said in the release. "The state test scores used to generate the labels released today were administered in October 2011 to measure learning from the 2010-2011 school year. A gap may be because of the diversity of students served by the school. There may be instructional and
curriculum factors contributing to the gap. My understanding is that the purpose of the label is to focus attention on the gap so that such factors are explored. Non-Title I schools (Addams and ROMS) are not subject to sanctions nor any of the state mandates associated with the label."

“We are committed to closing the achievement gaps in all of our schools for all of our students,” Flanagan said in the release. “With this measure of transparency, schools will be identified and held accountable for the achievement of all of their students.”

Because of the NCLB waiver granted from the federal government, the state in 2012-2013 will no longer be measuring districts based on AYP. Starting next year, school districts will receive accountability scorecards that use five different colors to recognize varying levels of achievement and accountability for each school and district.