Schools fail AYP
Jackson: Galup-McKinley ratings disappointing

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — None of the schools in the Gallup-McKinley County Schools made AYP this year.

“I’m disappointed,” Geneieve Jackson, president of the county school board said. “ With our new leadership, I’m very optimistic that we will have more schools make AYP in the next year.”

AYP — Adequate Yearly Progress — is a part of the No Child Left Behind act. Each school in the nation is given certain goals in reading and math that students have to make and each year the goals are increased.

Last year, two of the 34 schools in the McKinley County District — Red Rock Elementary and Roosevelt Elementary — made AYP after a year when no school made it.

Under the program, students are divided up into segments —— for example, Native American, Hispanic, those that get free lunches and those with English as a second language. In order to pass AYP, each segment must pass.

At Red Rock, the group that did not pass was the English language learners in reading. At Roosevelt, it was the English language learners in math.

The school board decided to hold a work session Aug. 27 at 6 p.m. to discuss the AYP situation, school by school.
Ed Monaghan, assistant superintendent for the district for curriculum, said that the district is still waiting for a complete report on why all of the schools failed to meet AYP.

But he said the information that the district has received so far indicates that not all the news is bad.

For example, the figures for Red Rock Elementary shows that the district failed by one student making AYP.

The figures also showed, he said, that some schools are making good progress, others are stagnant, while still others have flat-lined.

“Washington Elementary has shown phenomenal gains,” Monaghan said.

He pointed out that 41.9 percent of the schools in the state made AYP this year and next year, when the goals are scheduled to increase even more, Monaghan said he expects that only about 25 percent will be able to meet the new goals.

For that reason, what school districts may want to look at is how much schools are improving since there are a number of schools that have been showing improvement in most of the categories.

“Some schools have 37 indicators that they have to pass if they want to meet AYP and failing just one of them means they will fail AYP,” he said.

There were a couple of schools in the Gallup district that in the last two years met all of the criteria for reading and math and failed AYP because their attendance was too low.