GHS Pays a (Small) Price for Missing 'No Child' Standards

Officials say achievement targets are unrealistic and will be worse next year.

School District 304 must spend at least $22,000 to improve Geneva High School students’ math and reading test scores enough to meet the No Child Left Behind Act targets, officials announced Monday. The Board of Education approved a school improvement plan required by the Illinois State Board of Education and the U.S. Department of Education because less than 85 percent of students met or exceeded state standards last year, explained Superintendent Kent Mutchler. About 76.3 percent met the standard in reading, while 77.2 percent met the standard in math. White students, the only racial subgroup large enough to be counted separately at the high school, reached 77 percent achievement of state standards in reading and 78 percent in math. …

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Moms Talk POLL: Are 'No Child Left Behind' Requirements Fair and Practical?

By 2014, NCLB will require 100 percent of students to meet test requirements in math and reading.

Wading into the results of the 2011 Illinois Report Cards can be nearly as confusing as an ACT test might look to a student with dyslexia. On one hand, according to the Chicago Tribune: By the same token, if you look at the Sun-Times list of the top 50 high schools in the Chicago area, all four of those schools are on the list and doing well. That's because the overall test scores at these Tri-Cities high schools are very good. But they didn't meet federal standards because this either (a) this year's results don't meet the very high NCLB benchmarks or (b) this year's percentage of students who meet or exceed test standards fell slightly or only went up marginally from last year's percentages. Our school aren't alone. According to Illinois…

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Sandy Kaczmarski

5:06 pm on Thursday, November 3, 2011

Perhaps parents are tired of the question. I've talked with many educators who have questioned the validity of the supposed goals and 'bar' that sets an unrealistic and unrelated standard for learning. The numbers have never added up. How can these schools "fail" and yet all have extremely high marks when it comes to student achievement. It's time schools stop having to work around the pointless …   more ›

State Report Cards: 91.2% Geneva Students Test Above State Standards

Percentage also exceeds No Child Left Behind target of 85 percent. But two schools and the district did not make "adequate yearly progress" as defined by NCLB.

Average scores achieved on state tests by Geneva School District’s students far outpaced the average statewide scores, according to building and district report cards compiled and released recently by the Illinois State Board of Education. The report cards show that 91.2 percent of Geneva’s students tested at or above state standards on all state tests. The state average for students meeting or exceeding standards on state tests is 76.5 percent. Following the state’s graduated growth model for compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act, this year’s target percentage for meeting or exceeding standards was 85.0 percent. The No Child Left Behind Act calls for 100.0 percent of students to meet or exceed standards by 2014. “We are extremely …

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State Wants to Get Out of Some No Child Left Behind Rules

Illinois is not faring well—with 80 percent of school districts and 65 percent of schools—failing to meet federal standards.

A growing number of schools are failing under the federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, according to the 2011 State Assessment data that the Illinois State Board of Education has released. In light of these results, state education officials are planning to seek a waiver from some of the law’s provisions. Results show 695 or 80 percent of Illinois districts and 2,548 or 65 percent of schools, up from 51 percent last year, failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind. Only eight high schools made AYP based on this year’s test results. The statewide results were announced Thursday, Oct. 20 as part of the state board’s analysis of the new State Report Card and more than a month after the U.S. Department…

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Jeff Ward

7:44 am on Monday, October 24, 2011

Pat, Virtually every metropolitan school district in the country is failing to make AYP or "adequate yearly progress." The problem is that all of the subgroups outlined by NCLB have to pass as well. And some of the subgroups include special ed, low income and minority students who each have to hit a 100 percent passing grade in 2014. For now, rural schools tend to pass because they don't have as …   more ›

Inside Geneva: Jeff Ward

Jeff Ward: More Than 600 Very Positive Words About Geneva Schools

GHS is doing a pretty good job of preparing students for college! There, I said it. Happy?

I love it when readers respond to a column contentions with, “Instead of this $#*!, why don’t you write something positive!” Translated, that almost always means, “What you wrote conflicts with my world view and because it challenges my reality in a way that makes it difficult to mount a cogent argument against it, I’ll do my best to bully you into changing the subject. In other words, it means I’m doing my job by challenging the status quo. The truth is, Geneva Patch has plenty of capable writers who, like Beth, Renee and Sandy, tend to focus on the more positive aspects of life in Geneva. Though I may have a vested interest in this assertion, I believe at least one curmudgeonly columnists balances things out quite nicely. But every now …

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Jeff Ward: Notes on West Suburban Civilization

Jeff Ward: Like Lemmings, We're Marching Toward 2014 Academic Armageddon

And despite the editor's Armageddon headline here, the sky isn't falling. The real culprit isn't kids or teachers; it's No Child Left Behind.

In yet another of their “the sky is falling” school pieces, the Aug. 31 Chicago Tribune headline blared “Public H.S. grads struggle at college”! The report went on to describe how Chicago-area students who generally got B's in high school weren’t faring nearly as well at Illinois state universities. To prove their point, the newspaper included all sorts of tables showing the disparity between high school and college grades. Since they only included the best and worst cases, I pulled out the data for all of our Patchland high schools and sorted it by the best state college grade point average to the lowest: Source: Chicago Tribune   I have to admit, in a hermetically sealed statistical world, these numbers are quite fascinating. Hinsdale …

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Mary Stith

7:42 am on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Well said Angela!   more ›