A year after being put under academic review for its DSTP scores, Milford High School’s status with the state has slipped again. The school is now on academic watch after the gap between Caucasian and African-American students’ test scores grew for the second straight year.
“It’s going to take them a while to come out of that,” Milford School District Superintendent Sharon Kanter said. “It’ll be a tough nut to crack, but we’re going to crack it.”
Along with requiring a baseline level of performance every year, the state grades schools on how well its minority students do compared to the rest of their class. The process looks at both ethnic minorities and other differences, like low-income students and those with learning disabilities.
In Milford, as in most school districts, students in those groups fared worse than the average on the DSTP. Unlike most schools, MHS saw the difference in their scores get worse this year.
“This is a statewide problem,” school board member Paul Faulkner said. “It seems like every district has problems with the testing in high school.”
In the 10th-grade tests — the ones the state uses to evaluate a high school — the gap between Caucasian and African-American students grew in every subject. It was only a small change in reading, from 19 percentage points last year to 22 points in 2009, but math and writing both saw double-digit drops. Last year, 27.6 points separated the races last year in math; this year the gap was 38.5 points. In writing, average scores were seven points apart, and this year they’re 17 points apart.
“If we don’t get these groups moving, we’re going to be in trouble,” Kanter said.
The gap between low-income students and those with average income shortened, but still fell short of the state’s goals. It rose by two points in writing, dropped by two points in math and dropped by eight points in reading.
MHS administrators did not respond to a call for comment.
Kanter spoke on MHS’ status to the district school board at its Aug. 3 meeting to give them an update on MHS’ situation and promise action.
“We need to do something different this year for the high school,” Kanter said. “We’re putting some things in place as we speak.”
It takes two years of improvement in both overall test scores and the gap between average and minority groups for a school to recover from being put on academic review or watch. Milford officials had hoped MHS would take the first step in that process this year.
“We need to do a better job in our reading program... We need to provide support systems and safety nets for the kids,” Kanter said. “We don’t have a choice here. We’re in academic watch. We could slip into restructuring in a few years, and we don’t want to go there.”
If a school continually fails to meet state standards, the state starts enforcing corrective measures. That can include letting parents move their students into other districts and forcibly restructuring the administration.
Milford, Del. —
