List of Utah schools needing improvement faces review

Testing officials with the Utah State Office of Education say they will review — and possibly rework — the list of schools that need improvement under federal education guidelines after district chiefs contended the list was inaccurate.

"It's a matter of making sure that all of the schools that are identified (as those) in need of improvement go through that second filter," Karl Wilson, Title I director for the State Office of Education, said.

At least four schools that state education officials had identified as needing improvement under No Child Left Behind — East Midvale Elementary, Vae View Elementary, Santaquin Elementary and White Horse High schools — will likely not appear on the new list, Wilson said.

A school that was not on the original list, Lynn Elementary in Ogden, will likely be on the new list as a school needing improvement, Wilson said. Lynn was initially left off the improvement list, but test scores at the school have not improved for two years.

Wilson said he did not know when the new list would be available because staff members needed to help compile it are out of the office and working on other assignments.

The initial list was released Thursday although school principals said officials in their districts had revealed their status to them weeks ago.

Schools that receive federal Title I money because at least 40 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged can be placed on what's called "school improvement" if for two consecutive years they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which requires them to perform well on the state's language arts and math standardized tests. Those are used as the standardized test required by No Child Left Behind.

Schools on the list can face sanctions that range from requiring students to receive tutoring to facing a school take-over by state education officials. The severity of the sanctions depend on how long the school remains on the needs-improvement list.

Schools that show adequate yearly progress on the standardized tests for two consecutive years are removed from the list, according to the federal law.

However, this fall, state education officials did not remove East Midvale Elementary, in Midvale; Vae View Elementary in Layton; and White Horse High in Montezuma Creek in San Juan County from the school-improvement list, even though the schools made AYP for two consecutive years.

The schools weren't removed from the list because the schools, at least once in the past two years, had successfully appealed a state decision that their test scores weren't good enough to prove adequate yearly progress.