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Fourteen of the 24 Lake County schools with performance growth targets met them for the 2006-07 school year, according to the California Department of Education.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell on Aug. 31 released California's 2007 Accountability Progress Report (APR) that is comprised of the state Academic Performance Index (API), the federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), and the federal Program Improvement (PI).
Looking at recent test scores, O'Connell said he noted “a general leveling off after steady gains in student achievement over the past five years.” The APR, which he said is a compilation of schools and districts that are meeting academic performance targets, is consistent with student performance on the annual assessments.
That leveling off, said O'Connell, shouldn't be misinterpreted as an overall decline in student or school performance. “It is important that we not lose sight of the significant gains that our students and our schools have made,” he said.
O'Connell said these results reflect significant achievement gains by our lowest-performing students, and significant gains by African American, Hispanic, and English learner subgroups.
Lake County's 40 public schools include several special education centers and continuation schools not required to meet growth targets for the API report.
Overall, 24 county schools must meet it, and 14 of them did this year, compared to 11 that met the standards last year.
In the 2004-05 school year, 16 Lake County schools met their growth targets; 15 did so in the 2003-04 academic year.
The API is a numeric index that ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. The 2006 results established the current baseline and academic growth targets for each school's academic performance, according to O'Connell's report.
Statewide, the median API score grew from 745 last year to 751 in 2007, and the percentage of schools at or above the performance target of 800 grew by just 1 percentage point, from 30 percent to 31 percent. The percentage of schools meeting all API targets decreased from 53 percent in 2005-06 to 45 percent in 2006-07.
Only three Lake County schools this year had an API score above the 800-point performance target: Riviera Elementary, 810; Cobb Mountain Elementary, 842; and Coyote Valley Elementary, 810.
A school's school-wide annual growth target is set at 5 percent of the difference between the school's base API and the statewide performance target of 800 with a minimum target of 5 points, the Department of Education reported.
Both the API and AYP are based on statewide assessment results, including the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program and California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE), which the Department of Education released last month.
The Department of Education noted that AYP results show that 66 percent of schools met AYP requirements, unchanged from last year. However, the percentage of local educational agencies (LEAs) making AYP fell from 64 percent in 2006 to 53 percent in 2007.
Beginning next year, it's going to become increasingly difficult to meet these progress targets, the Department of Education reported. That's because AYP targets will rise steeply for the next six years to meet the current federal requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
Schools have an opportunity to review their data and make corrections. AYP, API, and PI reports will be finalized in February 2008.
To see a complete list of reports, visit www.cde.ca.gov and click on “Accountability Progress Reporting.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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In a statement issued following Petraeus' testimony before Congress, Thompson called the general's report “just a thinly guised veil of President Bush’s routine excuses for continuing war. While his intentions may be good, the general only confirms my belief that redeployment should begin immediately.”
Thompson, a Vietnam veteran, has been a vocal critic of the war since before it began.
“After nearly five years in Iraq, it is abundantly clear that the Iraqi government will not take responsibility for securing its country as long as our troops are doing it for them,” Thompson said. “Just this January, President Bush said that with the support of 30,000 more U.S. troops, the Iraqi government planned to secure their county by this November.”
Thompson cited a General Accounting Office report released just last week that finds that the Iraqi government is nowhere close to controlling their country. “Even worse, another recent report on the Iraqi security forces found that the Iraqi police force and the agency that oversees it are overrun with corruption and sectarianism,” he said.
Thompson quoted Bush who stated in January that if the Iraqi government didn't make progress, it would lose the support of the American people.
“I believe the American people have lost faith in the Iraqi government and in President Bush’s failed strategies,” Thompson continued. “For our own safety and that of the Iraqi people, we need a new direction in Iraq – one that puts our resources into finding a diplomatic strategy for quelling the violence in Iraq and rooting out terrorism both in Iraq and around the globe.
“We are far beyond envisioning our troops home, as General Petraeus has implied,” said Thompson. “The American people want to see all of their troops home as soon as possible, period.”
In order to begin that new direction, Thompson recently introduced HR 3071, which calls for redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin immediately, while simultaneously requiring the president to work with the United Nations to implement a region-wide strategy for containing Iraq’s civil war.
On Jan. 31 Thompson introduced another bill in Congress – HR 787, the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, which also was meant to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.
HR787 was the House companion to SB 433, introduced by Sen. Barack Obama. It set a troop deployment deadline of March 31, 2008.
The bill has remained in committee since March, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on HR 787.
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