Tohatchi Elementary only district school to pass AYP

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Only one public school in McKinley County made AYP this past year: Tohatchi Elementary.

All of the other schools in the district failed to meet one or more of the requirements needed to pass the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress.

This didn’t come as a surprise to district officials who pointed out that the way the AYP program is structured, it is becoming increasingly difficult for schools anywhere in the nation to pass AYP.

A total of 525 schools — 68.2 percent of the schools in the state — did not pass AYP this year. This is up from 440 schools or 54.5 percent that did not pass last year.

Ed Monaghan, assistant superintendent for learning services for the district, said that in order to pass AYP this year, all schools in the district — even those that didn’t pass AYP last year — had to meet goals that were 10 percent higher than the ones last year.

About one-third of the schools in the district showed declining test results, while another third remained about the same and the last third showed substantial improvement.

The AYP standards — which is part of the federal “No Child Left Behind” program — have been criticized from educators all across the country as not focusing on real standards, since many schools have been showing significant gains but are looked upon as failures because they don’t pass AYP.

Monaghan said the district is looking at those schools that have shown decreases or haven’t shown any progress to see what can be done to improve scores there.

He said other schools, such as JFK Mid, Thoreau Mid, Tohatchi High and Pine Hill have all shown huge increases, although none of them have passed AYP.

The state released the results last Friday, and Monaghan and his staff are now working on a summary to show how each school in the district fared in the AYP program for the past four years.

Board members asked that when the summary is completed, probably in the next few days, that it be printed up and sent to the chapters so that it could be put up on their bulletin boards.