Georgetown high school, junior high miss state goals

GEORGETOWN – School officials learned Tuesday that too many high-school and junior-high-school students in the district underperformed on standardized state tests last spring for their schools to meet the state's adequate yearly progress goals.

Mary Miller Junior High School failed to meet the goals in reading, and Georgetown-Ridge Farm High School failed to meet the goals in both math and reading. Mary Miller Junior High met its goals last year, but this is the second year in a row that Georgetown-Ridge Farm High has not.

Each spring, elementary and middle-school students across the state take the Illinois Standard Achievement Test, and 11th-grade students take the ACT college-assessment test and the Prairie State Achievement Exam. The results allow school officials to see how their students compare with students statewide and how they are progressing from year to year.

Under the adequate yearly progress goals, 70 percent of all students must meet or exceed state standards on the math and reading portions of the test.

In spring 2009, 37.7 percent of Georgetown-Ridge Farm High School students taking the standardized test met or exceeded state standards in reading – as compared to 56.9 percent of 11th-grade students statewide in 2009. In spring 2008, 46.4 percent of Georgetown-Ridge Farm High students met or exceeded state standards in reading.

Likewise, in spring 2009, 34.4 percent of Georgetown-Ridge Farm High students taking the standardized test met or exceeded state standards in math – compared to 51.6 percent of 11th-grade students statewide in 2009. In spring 2008, 42.0 percent of Georgetown-Ridge Farm High students met or exceeded state standards in reading.

At Mary Miller Junior High, 51.8 percent of the seventh-graders who took the standardized test in spring 2009 met or exceeded state standards in reading, as compared to 77.5 percent of seventh-graders statewide, and 67.8 percent of Mary Miller seventh-graders who took the test in spring 2008.

At Pine Crest Elementary School, 70.0 percent of third-grade students met or exceeded state reading standards in spring 2009. At Ridge Farm Elementary School, 67.0 percent of fourth-grade students met or exceeded state reading standards in spring 2009. Both schools met their goals.

Georgetown-Ridge Farm High School Principal Steve Sliva said a detailed breakdown of the results showed that high-school math teachers in the district need to help students with their geometry skills, and ACT-preparation tests – which are already taken by ninth- and 10th-grade students in the district – will be taken by eighth-graders starting next year.

But all the school officials agreed that an increased emphasis on reading was needed across the district.

"We are committed to it," said Janice VanDuyn, assistant principal at Mary Miller Junior High.

Superintendent Greg Irwin said school administrators are reviewing data from the test results to target areas that need improvement.

"We are doing what we can to move in that direction," Irwin said. "Our hope is to reach a point where every student meets or exceeds state expectations."

Georgetown-Ridge Farm School Board President Jack Morrison said he appreciated the work that staff and principals were doing in the schools. But he added that testing results at the high-school level have been a problem for years.

"It's a concern," Morrison said.

In other business, school board members voted to pursue selling $535,000 in working cash bonds to build up cash reserves in the district.

Irwin said that interest rates are so low now, refinancing some existing bonds and extending their payback dates by two years – from 2014 to 2016 – may cover most of the cost of the working cash bonds. The board is expected to vote on the bond issue in November.

In related business, the 22-year-old roof over Ridge Farm Elementary is in need of replacement, and board members are considering issuing about $500,000 in life-safety bonds to pay for the work. Irwin said the board may vote on the life-safety bond issue as early as November, and the work may be done in the summer of 2010 or 2011.

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