County bests Va. average on school benchmarks

Three times as many Charlottesville schools failed to meet federal testing benchmarks last school year than in the previous year — even though city students fared better overall on the tests.

On the other hand, a far greater percentage of Albemarle County students passed the reading and math exams than did students statewide. In addition, fewer Albemarle schools failed to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks last year than in the year before.

Statewide, 1,371 schools, or 71 percent, made AYP last year, compared with 74 percent of schools in the prior year.

Overall, 89 percent of students passed in reading and 86 percent passed in math.

The information was released Thursday as part of the Virginia School Report Card completed by the state Department of Education, which measures student academic success under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Charlottesville High School, Buford Middle School and Clark Elementary School did not meet the federal benchmarks last school year. Yet of the six city schools that met the standards, four have Title I programs, which means those schools receive federal funds to help children in high-poverty areas who are behind academically or at risk of falling behind.

The city school divisions’ outcomes were based on reading and math tests administered during the 2008-09 school year. All of a locality’s public schools must meet 29 benchmarks to make Adequate Yearly Progress.

Three Charlottesville schools did not make AYP last school year, up from only one the year before.

The Charlottesville school division, as a whole, failed to make AYP for 2008-09.In the most recent school year, 81 percent of students needed to pass the reading test to be considered proficient, and 79 percent of students needed to pass the math assessment.

Those minimums represent a 4 percentage point increase over the year before.

The Albemarle school division made AYP. Two of its 25 schools failed to meet the federal benchmarks, compared with five the previous school year.

Whether the county’s new charter school made AYP hasn’t yet been determined.

Albemarle’s division-wide pass rates were 93 percent in reading and 91 percent in math, an increase from the previous year’s pass rates of 91 percent in reading and 89 percent in math.

Charlottesville’s pass rates were 86 percent in reading and 82 percent in math, an increase from 82 percent in reading and 78 percent in math.

“You have to kind of keep in mind that the target is moving,” said Laurie McCullough, the director of student achievement and program evaluation for the city’s schools.

Across the board, Charlottesville’s schools saw general improvement in their test scores, administrators said.

“That doesn’t happen by accident,” McCullough said.

In Charlottesville, black students’ pass rates in reading have jumped by 12 percentage points in just two years, from 66 percent to 78 percent, and economically disadvantaged students saw similar gains, with reading pass rates increasing by 11 percentage points.

Those same groups made gains of up to 10 percentage points in math as well.

For those tests, white students had pass rates between 90 percent and 94 percent.

The three city schools that did not achieve AYP had shortcomings on certain benchmarks — at Charlottesville High School, for example, insufficient percentages of black students and students with disabilities passed in math.

“Now you get down to individual students,” said Gertrude Ivory, the city schools’ assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

City school administrators said they would focus on black students’ math achievement levels as they move into the upper grades. At Buford, for example, 57 percent of black students passed their math assessments. At CHS, the number increased slightly, to 65 percent.

Albemarle school officials said that they’re pleased with the AYP results, though some improvements still need to be made. Cale Elementary, which is a Title I school, and Sutherland Middle are the only schools that failed to make AYP, because math pass rates were too low.

Math pass rates at Cale fell below the previous year’s rates in nearly every category.

“One of the things this data can do is kind of give you a wake up call,” Albemarle County School Communication Coordinator MauryBrown said. “They know that they need some significant improvements in their mathematics instruction.”

Student performance at Sutherland was high, with 96 percent of students passing reading exams and 92 percent passing math exams. The school did not make AYP, however, because too few economically disadvantaged students passed math exams.

Billy Haun, the county’s assistant superintendent for student learning, said that school officials would evaluate data to determine where improvements need to be made and ascertain how some of the division’s schools were able to do well in areas where other schools struggled.

Five county schools failed to make AYP in 2007-08, but all those schools met the benchmarks last year.

“They just sort of took their numbers and got busy and drilled down to what they needed to do,” Haun said. “They had some tutoring programs and after-school programs that worked, but I think the most significant thing probably is that they [gave] more rigorous instruction during the school day.”

Luvelle Brown, the chief information officer for Albemarle’s school division said: “We’re significantly closing the achievement gap.”

At Henley Middle School, for example, black students jumped from a 76 percent reading pass rate in 2007-08 to 91 percent last year. And a 55 percent pass rate for black students in math rose to 85 percent.

This article was edited to more accurately reflect available information.