The Test Score Shell Game Begins

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20080322-9999-1m22close.html

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District's education plan goes extra mile



Chief seeks to boost low-scoring schools

By Chris Moran
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 22, 2008

SAN YSIDRO ? San Ysidro's superintendent is 
proposing a shake-up of low-scoring schools that 
would cause nearly 2,000 students and dozens of 
teachers to switch campuses in the fall.

The San Ysidro School District is under pressure 
from the state to boost its math and reading test 
scores. Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger 
prescribed reforms for San Ysidro and 96 other 
districts statewide where not enough students 
have passed state tests for four straight years.

The governor's order, however, only requires 
districts such as San Ysidro's to hire outside 
experts for advice on improving instruction.

Superintendent Manuel Paul decided to take a 
bolder path for his 5,200 students in 
kindergarten through eighth grade, nearly 
two-thirds of whom don't speak English fluently.

The Escondido Union, Fallbrook Union High, 
Grossmont Union High and South Bay Union school 
districts face similar state orders, which will 
escalate in severity if the districts don't 
improve. None has proposed changes as radical as 
Paul's. He intends to bring the plan to the San 
Ysidro school board next month before forwarding 
it to the state Board of Education.

Paul said the restructuring is necessary to boost 
learning. ?We can't continue doing the same thing,? he said.

The district has seven schools: a K-8 school, a 
middle school with grades seven and eight, and five K-6 campuses.

Paul's plan would close one school temporarily, 
send sixth-graders to the middle school and 
reorganize other schools to focus on fewer grade 
levels. One school would serve kindergartners 
through third-graders, a second would be for 
first-through fourth-graders and a third would be for fourth-and fifth-graders.

Paul said he expects that some parents, teachers 
and students will object. Many teachers would be 
assigned to a new workplace, and some families 
would face longer commutes and the prospect of 
having children at two or three campuses under the proposed configuration.

Paul said he's counting on his standing as a 
32-year San Ysidro schools employee ? and former 
student ? to convince community members that his 
isn't flavor-of-the-month reform.

?Everybody knows me, and they know that I'm not 
going anywhere,? Paul said. ?I'm not going to 
start something that I'm going to leave anybody 
else to finish. It's my neck. All they have to do is get a rope.?

Willow Elementary School, near the Las Americas 
shopping mall, had already been slated for 
reconstruction, but administrators had intended 
to keep the school open until recent findings 
from building experts indicated safety threats in doing so.

Willow is scheduled to close at the end of the 
school year and reopen 18 months later. Its 
students will transfer to four other campuses.

Smythe Elementary will shed its fourth-, 
fifth-and sixth-graders and absorb kindergarten 
through third-graders from other schools. 
Assistant Superintendent Gloria Madera said 
larger numbers of students in fewer grades will 
allow the school to create more English-language 
development classes as they can more easily group 
students at each level of fluency.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law mandates 
minimum pass rates of 35 percent in reading and 
37 percent in math on state tests.

Schools that repeatedly fall short must give 
students the choice to attend other schools and 
offer to pay for private tutoring. In San Ysidro, 
students transferring out of the five lagging 
schools have converged on two campuses and even 
prompted the district to warn new residents of 
Ocean View Hills that they may be shut out of 
their neighborhood school because of overcrowding.

For each consecutive year that schools don't meet 
federal requirements, they face increasingly drastic orders.

The governor's orders target 97 districts, not 
individual schools. State remedies start with 
mild actions such as the hiring of consultants, 
but the state has already appointed a trustee take over schools in Coachella.

Schools and districts can recover their good 
standing in two ways. They can meet federal goals 
for two consecutive years, which can set even a 
five-year losing streak back to zero. They also 
can close campuses and reopen them with new grade 
configurations or educational programs that cause 
the state to treat them as newly opened schools with no past record.

It's not clear whether San Ysidro's proposed 
changes will reset the clock on any of its five 
low-scoring schools or on the district as a whole.


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Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; 
<http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/MAILTO:chris.moran@uniontrib.com>chris.moran@uniontrib.com