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Sisters, Oregon
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The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

Sisters schools meet federal standards
By Jim Cornelius

All three Sisters schools earned passing grades measured against the Oregon Department of Education's "Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)" standards.

The AYP report is a key measure for the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

AYP gauges the minimum percentage of students who must meet or exceed state standards in Language Arts (40 percent) and math(39 percent). The scores also reflect the rate of participation in tests, attendance for K-8 schools and high school graduation rates.

Failure in one category means failure overall.

Schools that fail to meet AYP standards for two consecutive years may be required to create and implement reform plans.

More than one in four schools in Oregon failed to meet the standards, according to a report in The (Eugene) Register-Guard.

Sisters schools met the standards, but they had some advantages: by being exempted from many target categories, the schools had fewer chances for failure.

The vast majority of performance targets set out in the AYP report do not apply to Sisters schools, either because of size or because of the composition of the student population.

For example, Sisters Elementary School met the standards in English/Language Arts -- but only four out of 10 targets (excluding attendance) applied. Sisters did not have to meet standards for "Limited English Proficient" students "Students with Disabilities" or various ethnic categories because the student population in these categories is not statistically significant.

Sisters Schools Superintendent Lynn Baker believes that small size gives Sisters significant advantages -- and not merely in exempting them from performance targets.

"The model for the supposedly perfectly-sized high school is 500 to 700 students," Baker noted.

In that environment, he said, "adults can know students well."

Baker argues that "no significant learning occurs without significant relationships -- almost a mentorship-type thing rather than just a purveyor of knowledge."

Baker was pleased to see the results of the AYP report, and he said that school administrators "feel proud that (the schools) have done so well." But he acknowledged that Sisters schools are held to a higher standard.

"I think for Sisters, because of our history, we need to shoot for something more," he said. "All of our kids can do better and we do have some kids who are not meeting the standards."

According to Baker, the district must strike a delicate balance to devote resources to help students meet standards without neglecting the high-achieving students.

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