By CHRIS FROST
Eagle Times News Editor
CLAREMONT, NH — SAU 6 Superintendent Michael Tempesta reviewed just one item during his Wednesday, Nov. 15, report to the Claremont School Board, Bluff Elementary School being identified as a school performing badly compared to its peers.
After the holiday break, the school district will create a public forum where residents can ask questions and discuss the plan to improve the school.
“The [Every Student Succeeds Act] report identifies Bluff as one of the lowest five percent performing,” said Tempesta. “It’s a serious situation, and we’ll have a training call to talk about the next steps. We’re also reaching out to our cohort of people in the area. Quite a few school districts in Sullivan County had schools identified, and around the state, there were 19.”
According to the U.S. Education Department, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to measure student performance in reading, math and science. Each state determines how to assess students, and every school must inform parents about standards and results.
Based on the scores, Assistant Superintendent Michael Koski said schools that need assistance are placed in three categories: comprehensive support, targeted support and additional targeted support, ranked in order from worst to least.
Koski pointed to a gap during the COVID years of the report for reading and math assessments.
“No scores were recorded in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID,” Koski said.
“We’re performing in the bottom five percent in Title I schools for the state or for some sub-groups,” Koski said.
“If you’re in the bottom five percent, Title I, you’re in a CSI [Comprehensive Support and Improvement] category; that is the most intervention needed.”
Title I is a federal designation given to schools where at least 40% of students are part of families living at 185% or less of the federal poverty line.
“More than half of all American schoolchildren (25 million) in about 60% of schools benefit from Title I funds. This doesn’t mean that 60% of students are low-income, because all students in a school benefit from Title I funds,” according to the online education group We Are Teachers.
Board Member Candace Crawford asked if it affected the whole school district, and Koski confirmed Bluff is not the only one.
“All of our schools, with the exception of Stevens, are Title I this year,” said Koski. “This is a federal accountability measure for federal funds.”
Vice Chair Frank Sprague added that in his experience, it was always the special education subgroup that was failing to perform.
“That may be the case in some schools,” Koski said. “I don’t want to identify school issues.”
He noted that each category is not measured each year.
“CSI is if you’re in a situation for two or more consecutive years,” he said. “ATI is measured every year. With the gap, during COVID, there wasn’t any reporting for those years. It appears like all of a sudden, we fell off a cliff, when in fact, if you look at data from 2018-2019, we’ve been in a very similar position for a number of years. Because it’s the bottom five percent, I’m making the assumption that other schools may have moved more. When we weren’t in that classification, we may have been some number above five percent. Those schools moved up, and we have moved down because our scores haven’t moved up.”
Board member Arlene Hawkins noted that assistance is coming from the state to make improvements, and Koski pointed out the results could be misleading as not all students take the state’s standardized tests.
“There is a parent opt-out for the state test; it does count against the school grade,” Koski said. “It’s not a blank. It counts as a non-passing score. It’s a zero.”
Crawford said the opt-out option is critical.
“If the opt-out means it’s a zero and those numbers get added into our aggregate numbers, it’s an inaccurate measure,” Crawford said.
Hawkins countered that some parents feel their students are overtested.
“The other reason families opted out is because of the extra stress they felt being in a formal testing situation,” said Hawkins.
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