http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=137390&title=Students%20may%20freely%20transfer%20from%2016%20schoolsStudents may freely transfer from 16 schools
Over the past year, California lawmakers have worked quickly to align the state in a race for federal education reform dollars. Many bills were passed quickly to aid the effort; among those bills is Senate Bill x54 which allows students in the lowest performing 1,000 schools the option to transfer to another campus.
Creating the list of 1,000 schools is complicated.
Annually the state releases the Academic Performance Index, a numeric scale ranging from 200 to 1,000 that reflects a school’s performance level based on statewide testing results. California has a performance target goal score of 800 for all schools. Schools are later given two academic rankings on a scale from one to 10 with 10 being the highest. The first score shows a statewide rank, calculated using each school’s Academic Performance Index and calculated separately for elementary, middle and high schools. The similar school rank shows the school’s standing among 100 schools with similar makeup — such as school, student and teacher characteristics. Because of how the rankings are calculated, there will always be schools ranked 1 and others ranked 10.
Schools with the 1 ranking can be considered for the open enrollment list. However, no district can have more than 10 percent of its schools included.
Because of the limit, some low-performing schools do not make the list while other schools, not traditionally considered to be low performing, make the list, said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto.
San Mateo-Foster City is fighting the distinction for that reason.
“It is incomprehensible to the education community that schools with an API over 700 that have been meeting their growth targets as calculated by the California Department of Education would be on a list of low achieving schools,” Pendery Clark, superintendent of the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District, wrote in a July 21 letter to the state board of education.
Sick little wrinkle. Because they have to declare a certain number of schools
in each district "low-achieving", schools that are making their AYP are placed on that this list to fill out the numbers. This is all just so wrong. Anyway, I thought I'd share what's going on in our little patch of the country.
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