PROVIDENCE — Only half of Rhode Island’s 58 public high schools are making enough progress in English and math, while the other half are failing to make adequate yearly progress — a slight dip from last year’s 54 percent.

According to the results of tests given to 12,000 juniors last March, 40 percent of the state’s high schools are failing to educate all groups of students — including special education, low-income and minority students — to the state standard on English and math tests. Because these 23 schools have failed for multiple years, they are classified as making insufficient progress by the state Education Department.

Another 10 percent of high schools have failed to educate all groups of students to the state standard for one year, and therefore are placed on a watch list, including several rural and suburban high schools: Burrillville, Cumberland, Narragansett, Westerly and Chariho Regional.

The other 50 percent of Rhode Island’s high schools — 29 schools — made adequate yearly progress in the 2006-2007 school year.

But proficiency rates among students statewide are stagnant. Despite an aggressive statewide high school reform effort, test scores of high school juniors have remained flat for the past several years, with about 53 percent scoring proficient or better on the English portion of the test and 43 percent scoring proficient or better in math.

Officials said they were disappointed more high schools were unable to have all groups of students meet the state standard in English and math, although it is harder for large schools with diverse populations to do so. Schools with 45 or more black, Asian, American Indian, Hispanic, White, special education, English language learners, and low-income students must break out test score results for each group, increasing the number of targets they must reach in order to make adequate yearly progress. Smaller suburban schools with smaller numbers of minority students, for example, have fewer targets.

“…It concerns me that only half of our high schools met their targets,” said Governor Carcieri in a statement. “Our education reform efforts must be redoubled to ensure that all Rhode Island children receive the instruction they need and deserve.”

LOW MATH SCORES continue to be the biggest problem, particularly for special-education students, as was the case last year. Half of the high schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress failed in just one target area: math scores of special-education students.

South Kingstown High School, which missed three targets in the 2005-2006 school year, missed just one last year — math for special-education students.

“The state math test is hard if you haven’t been successful in algebra and geometry,” said Robert A. Hicks, South Kingstown’s superintendent. “We are very happy we were able to improve in English language arts, but we have to make sure we put enough rigor into the math classes our students with [individual learning plans] are in. We’ve done revisions to our math curriculum and programs and will continue to pay attention to those areas.”

Math scores are improving statewide, particularly in urban districts, but not quickly enough for all groups of students, said Peter McWalters, the state commissioner of education.

Some parent and teacher groups have criticized the testing of special-education students who lag their peers, saying it is unfair to hold them to the same standard when they have not had the benefit of a rigorous curriculum or when their performance demonstrates they are unable to perform at grade level. But McWalters dismissed those concerns.

“As the parent of a special-needs kid, I’d rather have you err on the side of high expectations than put him or her in a low-expectation environment,” McWalters said. “We have to realize they also have to make gains for the system to succeed.”

CLASSIFYING SCHOOLS based on whether they achieved adequate yearly progress on yearly tests in English and math is a requirement of the federal education law No Child Left Behind.

The law requires that all students be able to read, write and compute proficiently at their grade level by 2014. To accomplish this, every three years Rhode Island raises the bar for what students are expected to achieve. Rhode Island created an index score — a complex formula that distributes points based on how students perform and computes a school average.

Last year, high schools were expected to reach an index score of 68.6 points in English and 54 points in math — or be moving large numbers of students toward those goals — in order to be classified as making adequate yearly progress. (The index scores do not represent the percent of students who are proficient.)

This year, the bar rises. When results of the October tests are released this spring, high schools will be held to a higher standard to make adequate yearly progress — 75 points in English and 63.2 points in math.

Making adequate yearly progress does not ensure all students are proficient, however. It can mean a struggling school is steadily improving, even though the majority of students perform below grade level.

For example, at Barrington High School, which boasts the state’s highest test scores, 81 percent of 11th graders scored proficient or better on the English test and 75 percent scored proficient or better in math.

But at Blackstone Academy, a charter school in Pawtucket that made adequate yearly progress, about 44 percent of juniors scored proficient or better in English and just 22 percent scored proficient or better in math.HOW HIGH SCHOOLS FARED

SOURCE: R.I. Dept. of Education

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL 

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