NIU joins state to honor improving schools

by Mark McGowan

NIU continues to recognize schools that are making the grade, most recently shouting “Bravo!” to schools that have shown progress.

This spring brought the first Academic Improvement Awards (AIA), given to 100 schools where students have made significant academic gains over the last three years while consistently meeting “Adequate Yearly Progress” as defined by federal No Child Left Behind legislation. NIU Outreach is coordinating the AIA program in partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education.

Award-winning schools range across all levels, from those where 40 percent of students meet the Illinois Learning Standards to those where 90 percent of students accomplish that goal.

Three ceremonies were held around Illinois, including two earlier this month.

“We need to recognize that there is a lot of good work going on in schools,” said Anne Kaplan, vice president for administration and university outreach.

“There are dedicated people – people who care deeply about students and care about learning. It is important to recognize the hard work that they do to help students succeed,” Kaplan added. “These awards are one way for the university to say, ‘Well done!’ and ‘Keep going!’ to schools that are working to change all our futures.”

“More often than not people talk about our schools failing, and time and time again I have said that they are not,” State Superintendent Robert Schiller said. “As demands to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind Act increase, it is gratifying for us to recognize those schools that are not only meeting requirements, but are definitely showing trends in improvement.”

To win an award, a school had to:

• make Adequate Yearly Progress in 2003
• show an upward trend in state test results
• either make significant academic improvement by showing at least a 7.5-point improvement in state test scores between 2002 and 2003 or at least a 15-point improvement in state test scores between 2001 and 2003, or earn removal in 2003 from the state’s Academic Warning List or School Improvement Status.

Researchers say the type of improvement exemplified by the AIA schools – that is, turning around poor performance – is often more difficult to achieve than incremental progress. For that reason, they say, schools that have worked their way off of warning lists or improved tests scores by a significant margin deserve as much recognition as those with a higher starting benchmark.

Helping the state publicize examples of exemplary student and school achievement is a hallmark of NIU’s P-20 (pre-school through graduate school) initiative. NIU’s involvement with the AIA awards follows the university’s coordination last fall of ISBE’s “Spotlight Schools” award presentations. NIU Outreach worked with the state board to establish criteria and identify winners of the awards.

Spotlight Schools are Illinois public schools where a majority of students come from low-income families, and in which 60 percent or more of students passed rigorous state tests in 2003. These schools also met the “Adequate Yearly Progress” standards imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind initiative as well as the state’s accountability system.

Penny Billman, an NIU Outreach researcher, will soon complete a study on what the AIA and Spotlight schools did to turn things around. She is interviewing the principals for their ideas and opinions on what makes a difference in raising student achievement.

For more information on the Academic Improvement Awards, and a list of the winners, visit http://www.p20.niu.edu/P20/acadimproveawards/index.shtml online.

6-28-04