Federal Adequate Yearly Progress Report - 2007 Summary

September 17, 2007

Dear Patron,

We have received the 2007 Federal Adequate Yearly Progress Report.  This report is required by federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation and provides another way to look at test scores.  Rather than presenting total school scores as other reports do, the report divides students within a school into subgroups for evaluation in several different ways.  The subgroups are: Asian, African American, American Indian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Economically Disadvantaged, Limited English Proficient, and Students with Disabilities.  All children with IQ’s of 55 or above are required to participate in the testing program regardless of severe learning disabilities or intellectual handicaps.  This means that children with intellectual abilities significantly below normal are expected to perform as well as students with average or above average abilities.

According to state and federal legislation, schools are required to meet goals based on the following criteria:

1. Participation: Each subgroup of 40 or more children must have 95% of the students take the test.  For example, in a subgroup of 40 students, 38 students must participate or the entire school will not meet federal standards.  The law does not allow students to be excused for illness without doctor verification, vacations, parental requests, disabilities or individualized special education plans. 
   
2. Academic Achievement in Language Arts and Math: All subgroups of 10 or more students must meet a status goal based on their performance on the state End-of-Level and End-of-Course Tests.  The achievement status goals will change every two years until 2014, when 100% of students are required by law to be proficient in mathematics and reading. 

Subgroups that do not achieve the academic achievement status goal but show a 10% improvement in academic performance over the previous year are also designated as meeting the academic achievement goal provided the subgroup also had an attendance rate of 93% or higher during the school year.

The included chart shows whether or not your school met or did not meet the new federal standards for Adequate Yearly Progress.  Schools must meet these standards in each of 40 subcategories.  Schools that meet the standards in all 40 subcategories are designated with a “Yes” in the “Met Federal Standards for Adequate Yearly Progress” column of the charts.

Schools that receive a “No” in one or more of the 40 subcategories did not meet Federal Standards for Adequate Yearly Progress and are designated by a “No.”  A school that met the standards in 39 subcategories and a school that met the standards in 10 subcategories would both be designated as being “in need of improvement” due to their failure to meet federal requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress.  Due to the difficulty in meeting these federal standards, 36 of our 92  participating schools were designated as being in need of improvement.

Your school results may seem confusing because a school doing an excellent job as a whole may be designated as not meeting federal standards due to a small number of children who did not participate in the testing process or due to a single subgroup of children with special needs or disabilities.  For example, the new testing requirements for special education students make it especially difficult for that subgroup to meet federal requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress.

We hope you will view this report as information to add to other more familiar forms of data about your school.  We invite you to read our annual report, visit our Web site at www.jordandistrict.org, or contact your school to see how students score on the other measures of school performance such as Advanced Placement Tests, the American College Test, the IOWA Tests and the state End-of-Level and End-of-Course Tests.  Jordan School District is committed to educational excellence and to the individual needs of each student.

Sincerely,

Barry L. Newbold
Superintendent          

View the 2007 AYP Summary