By Allison Wood
EMS Press
Traverse City East MS
1st Place
Division MS, News Writing
New Analysis
East Middle School and Central High School are considered Focus Schools by the state of Michigan. This is the first year East has been named a Focus School.
According to TBA ISD, Focus Schools are the ten percent of Michigan schools that have the widest gap in achievement rates between their lowest and high-est performing students. This doesn’t necessarily mean the school is low performing, just that there is too big of a gap on state standardized tests.
“One of the main reasons [we are a Focus School] is our top students perform very well on testing,” Linda Williams, learning support specialist, said. “Therefore, there is a large gap between our lowest and highest performing students.” Being named a Focus School means schools have to analyze data, focus on the weaker areas of instructional support and improve the lower performing students’ success rates.
The achievement gap is 25 percent of the overall calculations that go into declaring a school as a Focus School.
In July of 2012, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) gave states the option of requesting flexibility from the nearly impossible standards of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The NCLB mandated that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014 and that 100 percent of students graduate high school. Instead, the USED required states to maintain new standards that would determine what schools were in need of special attention and more support.
The bottom five percent of the list are considered priority schools. Only Kenwood Elementary of Cadillac Area Public Schools and Vanderbilt Area School in Vanderbilt, were determined priority in Michigan.
Reward schools consist of the top five percent of schools and the top five percent of schools that have made the most progress over the last five years. Courtade Elemen-tary School and, Montessori Elementary School of TCAPS were among the many listed as a reward school.
Like TCAPS, a school district can have schools in two different categories. One of the main reasons is because there is such a difference in socio-economic levels in the district.
East will remain a Focus School for a minimum of four years like all other Focus Schools. According to Williams, East’s status as a focus school was based on the MEAP scores of fall 2013.
Principal Colleen Smith said that the gap is not bad because it forces East to look at the types of programming offered for all students and look at different learn-ing needs. After studying the gap, East administrators reviewed how we are teaching the lowest performing students, the types of interventions we are offering to impact learning of these students, and tracked student discipline.
To close the gap, East has reorganized the way it teaches students at the low-est performing levels and added additional math and reading electives and tutoring after school.
“I believe we are making good progress,” Williams said. “School reform is a very difficult process, but we have taken many steps to help close our gap.”
The school leadership team made up of Smith and a group of teachers is key to closing the achievement gap.
“An important step is continuous instructional improvement,” Smith said.
“We meet regularly to discuss strategies for improvement and then the leadership team meets with the whole staff to share these strategies.”
The Michigan Department of Education requires that parents are informed that their child’s school had been identified a Focus School and the reasons for its identification. The letter must also include the district’s plan to improve the achieve-ment of the students.
“Parents shouldn’t be concerned that their child goes to a Focus School but they do need to be informed and a part of the solution,” Smith said.
Both Williams and Smith agree that being a Focus School is not a bad thing. This helps target areas of need.
“This is a great opportunity to bring our school community together to come up with different ways to meet all student need