Newport-Mesa Unified API, AYP improve

Newport-Mesa Unified schools showed improvement across the board, according to state standards and federal benchmarks released Friday.

“We’re quite pleased and very encouraged with the results,” said Peggy Anatol, district assessment director, referring to the state’s Academic Performance Index (API) and the federal 2007 Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) results.

The Academic Performance Index is a culmination of the results of state standardized tests and graduation rates.

The Annual Yearly Progress, which is part of No Child Left Behind, sets the benchmarks and uses the results from the index.

The first round of API standardized test scores, which are released in March, range from 200 to 1,000. Friday’s results showed the progress the district’s schools made over the entire academic year.

The federal AYP scores are the bar the federal No Child Left Behind act sets for yearly progress, and determine which Title 1 (low-income) schools could be subject to sanctions.

Until today, seven Newport-Mesa schools were on the federal Program Improvement track because they had failed to meet the No Child Left Behind benchmarks for two years in a row, with three on their first year of sanctions. Two of the three schools, Pomona and Wilson Elementary, met the federal standard, suspending an increase of sanctions. But TeWinkle Middle School fell short of the federal standards, even with a 43-point increase in the state’s API scores.

“We’re obviously going in the right direction,” said TeWinkle’s new principal, Kirk Bauermeister. “That’s the whole problem with this NCLB. You get an A-plus or you fail. We got an A-minus.”

Of the 10 areas that needed improvement coming into last year, TeWinkle has reached federal standards in eight of them.“We took a huge leap this year. Next year we just need a small step.”

If a school fails to make the grade after three years it faces a demand to revise the school plan and 10% of its money earmarked for low-income students must go toward teacher improvement. Students also have the option of attending a school not in the Program Improvement process.

TeWinkle’s growth, though significant, was not the highest in the district.

Sonora Elementary and Back Bay High School showed increases of 110 and 127 points, respectively. Statewide, API scores essentially leveled off, though they showed gains in academic performance for black, Latino and English-learner students.

The median state API score grew from 745 last year to 751 in 2007, and the percentage of schools at or above the performance target of 800 grew by just 1%, from 30% to 31%.

Newport-Mesa Unified showed a 13-point API increase.

Districtwide, 68% of all schools met their federal growth targets, far exceeding the state average of 50%.

SCHOOL SCORES

The six schools with the greatest growth in API scores:

Back Bay High School — 127 points (now 623)

Sonora Elementary — 110 points (now 819)

TeWinkle Middle School — 43 points (now 718)

Killybrooke Elementary — 41 points (now 815)

Victoria Elementary — 39 points (now 761)

Pomona Elementary — 33 points (now 687)