Related articles:

3 districts fail U.S. standards 42 schools fail fed assessment Blame lazy students for failing school Districts need more schoolsQuestion of the WeekNo Child Left Behind rules must be changedFailing label doesn't fit Desert View Most say labels placed on schools are inaccurate Vail superintendent saluted at 20-year mark Chinese students visit U.S.

Other articles by Andrea Rivera:

Amphi seeks new budget overrideSharing her spirit Kids score big at basketball camp

Other articles by Jeff Commings:

Schools' move depends on a big 'if' Dodge/Flower group joins effort to keep city clean and beautiful New big-name stores yield excitement

Other articles by Josh Brodesky:

Sellers also-rans in market for homes Josh Brodesky: For untold thousands, it all began at Brodsky Beaudry RV buys time in reorg plan

Construction
West-Press
Printing Health Care
CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Health Care
Dependable Health Services
Physical Therapists Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor

For the second straight year, hundreds of schools across the state have failed to meet federal standards largely because of an unresolved conflict between state and federal officials on what assistance special-education students can receive on standardized exams.

The public release today of how districts fared in meeting federal standards, known as AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress, places 10 Pima County schools that have failed to meet the standards for at least three years on the cusp of federal intervention that could range from cuts in funding to school restructuring.

Local failures ran the gamut from providing assistance to special education-students in the Foothills to English-language learners struggling with reading at a South Side district to several schools failing because they did not meet the 95 percent attendance requirement for test takers.

Only two major districts in Pima County — Tanque Verde Unified and Sahuarita Unified — made the grade.

There were bright spots. Several Tucson schools that had been failing have recovered after federal intervention, such as Tucson Unified School District's Lawrence Intermediate School and Roberts Elementary School. And state officials boasted that only one in four schools is failing now as opposed to one in three last year.

For the 2006-07 school year, 83 schools across Pima County failed to meet federal requirements. That's a slight improvement from 2005-06, when 97 schools failed to do so. That slight bump locally was reflected statewide: This year 518 schools failed across the state, down from 609 last year.

"There has been a tremendous improvement," said Tom Horne, state superintendent of public instruction. "We have had about a 20 percent drop in the number of schools not making adequate progress."

For the most part, however, educators, along with state and federal officials, said the newest federal progress report only highlighted problems with the No Child Left Behind Act when it comes to the testing of special-education students and English-language learners.

While the federal act and state rules don't let special-education students use alternative accommodations on standardized state tests, federal law requires schools provide the proper resources for success, including calculators or other aids.

Horne said how the federal law tests special-education students is "flawed," causing strong schools to fail on the annual evaluation because of their decisions to provide accommodations. Horne said he has made a request to the U.S. Department of Education to allow for the use of accommodations, but has yet to receive a response.

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents much of Southern Arizona and sits on the House Education and Labor Committee, said the committee will address the testing issues.

He'd like to see accommodations allowed for special-education students, as well as giving English-language learners a window of time, possibly three years, before they're tested. He also said there needs to be a way to assess improvement that districts make with students who enter school so far below grade level it could take several years for them to catch up.

"It's got to be reworked," he said of the No Child Left Behind Act. "Accountability for children has got to be also matched with support for the school districts to attack those issues of reading, math and science."

Federal guidelines require school districts, schools and student groups to improve yearly, with a goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by 2014. Adequate Yearly Progress is judged by the percentage of students tested and the number meeting or exceeding reading and math benchmarks.

In TUSD, the city's largest district, 29 schools failed to meet the federal requirements.

Of those, Cavett Elementary School and Wakefield Middle School are the district's top priorities because they've failed three years straight and are subject to federal improvement plans.

Steve Holmes, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, said the district has an action plan to address failing schools that largely revolves around school audits and changing curriculum to meet a school's needs. The district will, in part, model curriculum at those schools after Lawrence and Roberts, both of which had failed for a number of years but passed this year.

Like districts across the state, the conflict over accommodations for special-education students has been particularly vexing for TUSD.

Of the 29 schools that failed, 19 did so because they provided some type of accommodation to special-education students, said Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer.

Roughly 12 of those schools receive Title I funding, which is determined by Census poverty statistics. Title I funds are distributed to schools based on the number of students who receive free or reduced-cost meals. Failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress can result in more oversight of the federal funds.

TUSD receives roughly $22 million in Title I funding, but officials said they did not see it being cut. At worst, they said, how it would be spent would be changed.

Similar situations played out in other districts.

Schools in the Vail Unified and Catalina Foothills Unified school districts failed to meet federal standards for the second year in a row, because they provided accommodations to special-education students.

At Old Vail Middle School and Catalina Foothills High School, test scores of students who used aids, such as calculators on the math test, were deemed invalid, and therefore the share of students tested in certain categories fell below the required 95 percent.

In a letter sent by Catalina Foothills Superintendent Mary Kamerzell and new high school Principal Loren Rathert, parents were informed of the reasons behind the high school's label this week.

"Since Arizona did not regard calculator use as an allowable testing accommodation, our students who used a calculator were not counted as test takers at all. This means that we did not reach the 95% attendance rate and will not meet AYP," the letter states, adding the district's stance that calculators will continued to be offered, regardless of the outcome.

The consequences for a district such as Catalina Foothills are less severe because it does not rely much on Title I funds, Kamerzell said. About $228,000 of its $32 million budget comes from Title I subsidies.

Vail Superintendent Calvin Baker said federal officials need to examine the "Catch-22" nature of the situation.

"It's so widespread that something's gotta give," he said. "Too many good schools are getting bad grades because of this."

Meanwhile, seven schools in the Sunnyside Unified School District did not make AYP, and two of them — Chaparral Middle School and Desert View High School — are facing their third consecutive year of not meeting federal standards.

That means both schools must allocate up to 15 percent of federal Title I funds to tutoring for students, devise a school-improvement plan and meet with a No Child Left Behind coach, said Alex Duran, the district's director of research, assessment and evaluation.

The seven schools in Sunnyside did not make AYP because too few English-language learners passed the test, Duran said. Arizona's Proposition 203 stipulates that all students, regardless of their knowledge of the English language, must take the AIMS test in English. AIMS is the state's accountability test, one of the dozens of factors in the AYP assessment.

Duran said English-language learners in some states are given up to three years to learn English before they are required to take a state assessment test.

Sonoran Science Academy was one of 27 charter schools in Pima County that failed.

It's the first time the Northwest Side charter school has not made the grade.

The school failed because it allowed three special-education students to use calculators, and thus their scores didn't count.

Because the students' tests were thrown out, the school did not test 95 percent of special-education students.

"We were upset," Sonoran Science Academy Principal Ercan Aydogdu said. "We tried to help the students with their accommodations and then we were penalized. It does not mean we did something wrong."

Whereas other schools will continue to provide the necessary accommodations to their students, Sonoran Science Academy will take a different approach.

An accomplished school that consistently receives high marks from the state's accountability system, Arizona Learns, the school will ban the use of calculators on assessment tests to prevent a future failing label.

"Hopefully this will be the first and last time," Aydogdu said.

Sahuarita and Tanque Verde school districts were the only two major Pima County districts to meet federal standards. Officials in both districts say attention to detail and hard work year-round prepared teachers and students for the AIMS test.

In Sahuarita, the Galileo Educational Management System testing program is held in high regard because it evaluates the needs of individual students before they take AIMS tests, said Superintendent Jay St. John.

"We keep our eye on the ball," he said. "You can't ever let up."

Despite a large number of special-education students, Tanque Verde managed to pass AYP because the number of special-education students whose scores were made invalid due to the use of alternative accommodations was low, district assessment coordinator Carole Rostash said.

"We just happen to have few enough students where that didn't create a problem," she said.