Because of the “No Child Left Behind” legislation, every year a certain percentage of students must be either proficient or advanced in the junior literacy exam in order to meet the “Annual Yearly Progress”.
Not only does the whole school in general have to meet these expectations, but even subpopulations must meet these expectations, as well. If one subpopulation does not meet these requirements, then the whole school goes under improvement.
As a result, two years ago the school was been placed under “Targeted Improvement”, which means one or more of the subpopulations did not score high enough.
In a second year of “Targeted Improvement” there has been a setback in improving the school’s scores. Due to snow days, students have missed weeks of school that could have well been used to practice and prepare for the junior literacy exam on March 8 and 9.
“All of the past two weeks we have focused solely on practicing for the exam because we lost some time,” said junior Joey Reynebeau.
Students in their English classes have been participating in practice exams that consist of multiple choice and free response questions that assess each student’s ability to read.
“Our class has been taking some multiple choice quizzes from past exams as well as writing prompts from past exams,” said Reynebeau.
Other programs have been offered to help encourage higher test scores. Read 180, led by teachers Sandy Meyers, Lisa Breeling and Kim Biondo, is a program specifically dedicated to reach students who are on the borderline of getting a proficient score on the exam. This program is designed to create more one-on-one lessons to increase the student’s ability to read.
This year the junior literacy exam will be held March 8-9 from first to fourth period.