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After years of effort, both Dodge City High School and Dodge City Middle School have met the federal standards required by the No Child Left Behind Act in both reading and math. The 2009 scores mark the first time either school has made the crucial AYP, or adequate yearly progress, required by Congress since the controversial act was voted in under the George W. Bush administration.
Because the scores of one sub-category of disadvantaged students in one school can cause an entire district to fail, experienced educators learned long ago to balance the weight of NCLB measurements with the weight of their own experience.
"It's not the testing that we object to. We welcome that — we want to be held accountable," said USD 443 superintendent Alan Cunningham. "But the manner of testing often doesn't reflect a school's true accomplishments. Most educators now agree that measuring the growth of the same group of students over time is more accurate than comparing disparate groups to one another."
School officials and board members point to the victory as the real measure of the district's progress, more important than the fact that USD 443 as a whole didn't make the AYP cut.
"The high school and middle school passing meant that the entire district passed in every category except that of English Language Learners in reading - and almost every individual school's English Language Learners did pass," said Cunningham. "We are just tremendously proud of the hard work and effort the high school and middle school staff and students have made. And we see that same degree of effort getting results throughout the district."
Dodge City's achievement is all the more impressive because it is one of only a handful of the state's larger, more urban school systems to have come within a hair's breadth of making AYP district-wide. Until last year, USD 443 shared a NCLB profile of multiple individual school failures with its peer districts in Garden City and Liberal. And Dodge’s big cousins in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka, which have similar demographics on a bigger scale, have in common long lists of failing schools.
The significance of those urban centers on its state-wide profile was given short shrift by the Kansas State Department of Education’s announcement Wed. that 88.5 percent of the state's school districts did pass federal muster.
That 88.5 percent figure belies the fact that the vast majority of the state's actual students are enrolled in that other 11.5 percent - the districts that, like Dodge City, have not technically passed AYP, regardless of the progress they have made. Topeka, Wichita, Kansas City, Liberal, Garden City and Dodge, together enroll the bulk of Kansas' K-12 students — and none of them passed AYP.
But Dodge sure came close.
The larger districts share challenges not faced by their numerous small cousins. Together, they serve the overwhelming majority of Kansas children who are disadvantaged by poverty, disability, migrant labor and/or limited knowledge of English. And the recent huge legislative cuts to education, widely predicted to increase over the next few years, mean the stakes for these districts are higher than ever.
That's what makes Dodge City's achievement such a victory for staff, students, and board members.
After years of effort, both Dodge City High School and Dodge City Middle School have met the federal standards required by the No Child Left Behind Act in both reading and math. The 2009 scores mark the first time either school has made the crucial AYP, or adequate yearly progress, required by Congress since the controversial act was voted in under the George W. Bush administration.
Because the scores of one sub-category of disadvantaged students in one school can cause an entire district to fail, experienced educators learned long ago to balance the weight of NCLB measurements with the weight of their own experience.
"It's not the testing that we object to. We welcome that — we want to be held accountable," said USD 443 superintendent Alan Cunningham. "But the manner of testing often doesn't reflect a school's true accomplishments. Most educators now agree that measuring the growth of the same group of students over time is more accurate than comparing disparate groups to one another."
School officials and board members point to the victory as the real measure of the district's progress, more important than the fact that USD 443 as a whole didn't make the AYP cut.
"The high school and middle school passing meant that the entire district passed in every category except that of English Language Learners in reading - and almost every individual school's English Language Learners did pass," said Cunningham. "We are just tremendously proud of the hard work and effort the high school and middle school staff and students have made. And we see that same degree of effort getting results throughout the district."
Dodge City's achievement is all the more impressive because it is one of only a handful of the state's larger, more urban school systems to have come within a hair's breadth of making AYP district-wide. Until last year, USD 443 shared a NCLB profile of multiple individual school failures with its peer districts in Garden City and Liberal. And Dodge’s big cousins in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka, which have similar demographics on a bigger scale, have in common long lists of failing schools.
The significance of those urban centers on its state-wide profile was given short shrift by the Kansas State Department of Education’s announcement Wed. that 88.5 percent of the state's school districts did pass federal muster.
That 88.5 percent figure belies the fact that the vast majority of the state's actual students are enrolled in that other 11.5 percent - the districts that, like Dodge City, have not technically passed AYP, regardless of the progress they have made. Topeka, Wichita, Kansas City, Liberal, Garden City and Dodge, together enroll the bulk of Kansas' K-12 students — and none of them passed AYP.
But Dodge sure came close.
The larger districts share challenges not faced by their numerous small cousins. Together, they serve the overwhelming majority of Kansas children who are disadvantaged by poverty, disability, migrant labor and/or limited knowledge of English. And the recent huge legislative cuts to education, widely predicted to increase over the next few years, mean the stakes for these districts are higher than ever.
That's what makes Dodge City's achievement such a victory for staff, students, and board members.
