Huron Valley School District Meets Annual State Benchmark

Huron Valley Schools met state standards again last school year, according to the Michigan Department of Education's release of Adequate Yearly Progress reports this morning.

The only schools in the district that did not recieve a passing "A" grade for the 2010-2011 school year were and Milford High School.

Both Lakeland and Milford received "B" grades students with disabilities did not meet participation requirements for standardized tests.

Harbor High School, the district's alternative high school, did not receive a grade as no students met participation requirements for the tests.

The AYP assessment is required by the federal government as part of No Child Left Behind. Several factors go into measuring AYP, including MEAP scores for elementary and middle school students and the MME for high school students. The number of students who take the tests and the graduation rate for high schools are also factored into the calculation.

No Child Left Behind requires that at least 95 percent of all students participate for each subgroup that has 30 students.

"Both Milford and Lakeland have been identified for improvement," Janet Roberts, director of community relation said. "We are looking at what caused that group of students to not make AYP, and seeing where we need to make changes."

Those changes could include curriculum changes and the addition of programs to help students struggling with standardized tests.

Roberts added it's not disheartening that Harbor High did not meet AYP standards.

"Most alternative high schools struggle to meet AYP," she said. "You have a lot of kids dealing with hardships both educationally and in their lives. What we like to focus on is helping these kids graduate and continuing to raise our graduation rates."

A look at AYP across Michigan

Overall Michigan schools saw a 7.1 percentage point decrease in students making AYP, dropping from from 86 percent of schools in 2009-2010 to 79 percent in 2010-2011.

Michigan high school students showed significant declines in the percentage of high schools making AYP, going from 81.9% last year to 60% this year.

Jan Ellis, spokeswoman for the MDE, suggested the drop is the result of increasing proficiency target amid growing academic expectations. She said every time the state increases the target by 10 or 12 points, especially in math, there tends to be a group of students on the cusp, that when the scores increase, they just don't make it.

She said the math targets, for instance, had not increased for three years in a row, giving some students a chance to start to catch up, then they jumped significantly this past year, which put students behind again.

"We are raising the bar on what they need to know, to also raise AYP simultaneously is very, very difficult," she said.

Ellis said the state is awaiting word on whether the federal government will give Michigan a waiver on meeting proficiency targets in the next 10 years as it works on boosting overall academic performance.

She said that will allow the state to balance yearly progress with the increase in rigor in schools in Michigan are facing as the state adopts Common Core Standards.

"We want to raise the rigor of what students know, rather than lower the bar," she said.

Common Core Standards, essentially means setting specific goals for what students need to know in each subject. For instance, what exactly students should know in each grade/subject to have a clear understanding of it.

This, Ellis said, will better prepare students for college and career paths, make them reading to take the national assessment test, boost ACT scores and give a better understanding of what they are being taught.

Roberts said Huron Valley will continue to raise its standards on tests and ensure the tests remain rigorous.

"We want to challenge our students, but the AYP is just one of the tools we use to look at how we are doing as a district," Roberts said.