Feds say five years as principal in Persistently Low-Achieving School is too long

The Glasgow Daily Times reports that the US Department of Education is holding tight to at least one aspect of its get-tough policy on the state’s very lowest achieving schools.

An attempted appeal of a removal order for the principal at the high school in the Caverna Independent School system has been denied.

Here’s why I question the district’s attempt to keep this principal:

• Caverna’s principal has been in place for five years according to the Daily Times.

• The school failed to make adequate yearly progress in reading and mathematics for the last three years (See the school’s individual NCLB report for 2009, obtain from here.)

• The school’s 16.0 ACT Composite Score from the 11th grade testing in 2009 ranked 210 out of the 230 high schools in the state (My analysis of the 2009 ACT 11th grade testing results).

• School’s “Johns Hopkins Promoting Power Index” (a graduation rate like statistic) – 72% for the 3-Year average from 2006 to 2008. This means more than one in four students in the high school doesn’t graduate.

• Percent of students in the federal free and reduced cost school lunch program in 2009 (a poverty measure) is 57%. That ranks 777th out of the 1280 schools that had separate lunch data reported. By no means is this among the state’s highest poverty schools.

For comparison, the Boyd County High School reported 100 percent participation in the school lunch program in 2009. Boyd County’s 2009 ACT 11th Grade Composite Score was 17.5, a point and a half higher than Caverna Independent’s. Boyd’s Promoting Power Index for the 2006 to 2008 period was 79 percent.

I don’t know what the Caverna people are looking at, but it seems like they are in denial about what is happening in their high school.