By PETER HUSSMANN
The Newton Community School District is one of?28 districts across the state that were identified as a district in need of assistance for the current school year under the federal No Child Left Behind guidelines.
The Iowa Department of Education today released its 2012 State Report Card for No Child Left Behind. The results show that?28 of 351 (8.0 percent) public school districts were identified as in need of assistance. Thirty school districts were identified as needing assistance last school year.
The designation marks the?fourth consecutive year that the Newton district has been identified as not meeting its annual state participation goals or measurable objectives.
In addition, the report shows a total of the 1,381 Iowa public schools that provided services to students in grades K to 12 for which progress decisions were made, a total of 496 public schools (35.9 percent)were identified as schools in need of assistance. This is an increase of 6.3 percent from the 29.6 percent of public schools identified in need of assistance last school year.
Two years ago, 7.5 perccent of Iowa school districts were on the in need of assistance list and 24.9 percent of the state's schools.
Three Newton schools - Newton Senior High School, Basics and Beyond alternerative high school, and Berg Middle School - remained on the list from last year, with Aurora Heights being added as a school in need of assistance this year.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires public schools and districts to meet Adequate Yearly Progress targets for overall student population and for demographic subgroups in grades 3-8 and grade 11. These subgroups include socio-economic status, limited English proficiency, race/ethnicity and special education.
Schools must meet all targets in every student group to meet its progress requirement and must test 95 percent of students in each group. Average daily attendance and high school graduation rates are other academic factors considered.
The legislation also includes yearly target increases schools must meet in order to meet the long-range goal of having 100 percent of students meet grade-level standards in reading and mathematics by 2014. The targets for the past school year, however, did not increase in Iowa because the state requested and received a one-year freeze in June, shortly after the U.S. Department of Education turned down Iowa's application for a waiver from certain requirements of the federal legislation. The targets would have increased by about 7 percent had Iowa request been denied and resulted in even a?higher number of schools and districts missing progress goals.
The results, however, were linked to higher expectations set by the Iowa Core standards, the state's roadmap of what students should learn in school. A new version of the state assessment taken by students last school year was more challenging.
"Student achievement will be stronger in the long run as our state assessments evolve to match our standards, which have been raised to better prepare students for the demands of our globally competitive marketplace," said Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of Education.
Glass still contends that the No Child Left Behind Act holds schools to unrealistic measures and then labels those that fall short as failing. He said the Iowa Department of Education will continue to seek permanent relief from the law.
"We expect our schools to meet high standards, but we need an approach that focuses on student growth and progress in addition to proficiency on tests," he said. "Either reauthorization of No Child Left Behind must become a priority at the federal level, or our state legislature must give Iowa the ability to receive a federal waiver from No Child Left Behind, which would allow us to develop a rigorous accountability system that makes sense for our state."
The 2012 State Report Card can be found here.?The stages of in need of assistance status timelines for schools and school districts can be found here.
The Colfax-Mingo Middle School is the only other school in Jasper County appearing on the assistance lists.
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