State Education Office to Release Updated ‘School Improvement’ list

After re-evaluation of data, Dimmitt Middle School meets Annual Yearly Progress.

October 10, 2005 —The state’s education office will release updated adequate yearly progress (AYP) results for schools, districts and the state on Thursday. After considering information provided by school and district staff, scores for Dimmitt Middle School have been adjusted and the school is no longer on this year’s AYP list.

Dimmitt students have made significant gains in scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) over the past three years:

Those gains, until now, have not been enough to move the school past the bar of making AYP under provisions in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.

This year, gains on the WASL were enough to help Dimmitt reach specific achievement targets in reading and math for all subgroups of students. Those gains mean Dimmitt is no longer on the list of state schools that did not make AYP.

Initially, Dimmitt was on the list for not meeting specific achievement targets in the special education subgroup. That ruling was appealed, however, because two students in that subgroup should not have counted in the results of the testing due to a significant number of missed school days. Dimmitt also made enough gains in the other 36 categories of AYP to not be placed on this year’s list.

If the improvements at Dimmitt continue, and the school again sees gains on WASL tests, the school could be completely removed from the needs improvement category.

“This information is gratifying to the staff, students and parents of this community,” said Dimmitt Principal Charles James. “We know that this staff deeply cares about the academic and social success of its students. Dimmitt is a great place for teaching and learning and the yearly increase of WASL tests scores is clearly only a small measure of the things that this staff brings to the students and this community each day.”