An earlier posting examined the results of the small school initiative at Memorial high school. This post aims to examine West’s SLC grant. Similar to the Memorial grant, the goal of West’s SLC grant was to reduce the achievement gap and to increase students’ sense of community.
The final report is a major source of frustration for anyone who values data analysis and statistics. Essentially, there are no statistics reported. The data is presented in figures that are cluttered and too small, which makes them difficult to interpret. Changes over time are discussed as trends without any sort of statistical tests being reported. Most of the data presented are no more detailed than what anyone can pull off the DPI web site.
Before examining the impact of West’s restructuring on student achievement and on students’ connection to the school, it is necessary to identify just a few of the components of the West proposal that were never enacted:

On to the data…


Academic Achievement

  • Goal 1.a. Attendance – “Attendance rates for many sub-groups of students have declined since the 2000-01 school year, and a number of them remain below the district target of 94%.” (p. 19) In fact, the only groups that have shown an increase in attendance over this period of time are white and non-low income students.
  • Goal 1.b. Access to challenging coursework – The data on page 21 of the final report show that enrollment in Advanced Placement courses has declined for ELL and Other Asian students, remained unchanged for African American students and had a slight increase for Hispanic students, “… and the gap among groups persists.”
  • Goal 1.c. College Entrance Exams – “Participation in the ACT is up slightly, but down for the SAT over the last few years. Disaggregated data for the ACT show the persisting gap across racial/ethnic groups.” (p.21) While more than 60% of white students take the ACT, the percentage of minority students taking this test has essentially not changed, and is still below 10%.

  • Goal 1.d. Grade Point Average – “Trends in overall GPA’s are flat or increasing for some groups, but decreases for ELL students, Hispanic students, and students who are not low income (after steadily rising) are troublesome. GPA’s for students of color, low income students, and students with disabilities remain well below those for White, Asian, and economically advantaged.” (p.19) Only White and Other Asian students show increases in gpa over the last five years. For an indication of the extent of the achievement gap, the average gpa of African American and low income students was less than 2.0 for the last year data was available, while White students had gpa’s of over 3.0. The difference between groups has only gotten larger in the last five years.
  • Goal 1.e. Content Area Proficiency – There is some indication from WKCE scores that the restructuring has benefitted some students: “In comparison to the MMSD as a whole (shown below), the increase in percent of students at the advanced and proficient levels was greater for West for 6 of 9 student sub-groups in reading and 7 of 9 in math.” The increases for West’s White and limited English proficiency (LEP) students, however, were smaller than their counterparts across the District.
    A major goal of West’s SLC grant was to reduce the achievement gap. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the school is making progress in this area. Recall that the first year of the grant was 2003/04, and in that year the only impact of the restructuring was that students were assigned to SLC’s. It was not until the next year that students began to be assigned to their core courses within their SLC, i.e., changes in curriculum began in 2004/05. Looking at the table below, we can see that the achievement gap, as reflected in WKCE scores, is unchanged since 2003/04.

    WKCE 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07
    Reading          
    African American 34.0 53.7 51.5 50.7 53.5*
    Hispanic 35.0* 52.3 40.7* 60.5 40.0
    White 91.0 92.1 93.9 94.2 90.4
    Low Income 34.0 48.6 44.0 48.2 34.7
    Not Low Income 88.0 88.5 88.1 92 92.7
    Math          
    African American 31.0 48.1 39.7 38.7 51.2*
    Hispanic 45.0* 50.0 40.7* 55.8 42.2
    White 91.0 91.5 90.3 93.5 92.1
    Low Income 35.0 48.6 38.5 43.0 46.5
    Not Low Income 88.0 88.0 83.1 91.2 92.7

    * note. includes 4 Native American students 02/03 and 06/07, 1 Native American student 03/04

  • Goal 1.f. Graduation – “With some fluctuation, trends are in the right direction for all groups except student with disabilities. The gaps in graduation rates among the different groups merit ongoing attention.” (p.20) However, when we look at this figure, we see that it only presents data through 2004/05, and there is no change in the graduation rates for the two years of the grant for Hispanic or African American students.

    Given the data that West presents in their final report, one would be hard pressed to say that the restructuring has had a positive impact on student performance, and it appears that it failing in several major areas such as decreasing the achievement gap, increasing parental participation, and increasing attendance. I’ll examine the issue of School Community and Connectedness in another post, but I’ll leave you with this tidbit: the Final Report does not include any data from the student climate surveys.