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By Ryan Pagelow Freshman Frank Barrera goes to the library to work on his algebra homework after school a couple of days a week at Mundelein High School. "When I come here, nothing distracts me," he said. "At home, I get distracted by TV and friends." The after-school tutoring program is one of a number of things Mundelein High School is doing to boost scores on state standardized tests, which dropped this year, along with half of Lake County's high schools, according to State School Report Cards released today. Only about 61 percent of Lake County high school students are meeting or exceeding state standards, compared with 84 percent of elementary students in the county. It marks a significant gap in performance between the elementary and secondary schools. Although the percentage of Lake County high school students meeting or exceeding state standards was higher than the state average, some local high schools are struggling to make gains under the federal No Child Left Behind mandate. Statewide, 328 high schools did not make adequate yearly progress this year, an increase from 221 last year and 313 in 2005. Mundelein misses mark Mundelein missed making adequate yearly progress on the Prairie State Achievement Examination taken in April in math or reading and in several subgroups, including Hispanics, disabled and low-income students. Mundelein, which is on the state's academic watch list, opened up the library for walk-in tutoring three nights a week as part of a new initiative this year to improve scores, said Anthony Kroll, director of curriculum at the school. Two math teachers, an English teacher and some National Honors Society students help the students who show up. In the first five weeks of the program, 225 students came, Kroll said. Also new this year, freshmen entering the high school in the lowest reading percentile are enrolled in 90 minutes of language lab all year long, Kroll said. Similarly, about 130 students coming into the high school with low mathematics skills are placed in a 90-minute algebra class all year long. "My frustration with No Child Left Behind is that we're using one score to judge Mundelein's success," Kroll said. Antioch, Grayslake success Two Lake County high schools that have managed to pull themselves off the academic watch list this year include Antioch Community High School and Grayslake Community High School. Antioch was able to raise its scores in the low-income and disabled subgroups to make adequate yearly progress for two years in a row. Instead of teaching special-education students in separate self-contained classrooms, the goal is move those students into mainstream classrooms with a special-education teacher to help them keep up, said District 117 Superintendent Jay Sabatino. Antioch also started having teachers observe colleague's classrooms in four-minute intervals with checklists in hand to evaluate how much reading is going on in the classroom, he said. The observations are also used to determine if too much time is spent on worksheets or lectures. Athletic teams have adopted a one-team, one-book program to encourage students not only to read, but to enjoy reading and discuss a chapter each week. For example, the field hockey team read "Tuesdays with Morrie," and the wrestlers read "Season of Life" about what's important in coaching, said Antioch Community High School Principal Mike Nekritz. "Slightly over half our teams are reading," he said. "We're trying to promote not only good academic reading but reading for pleasure. Coaches can have very different responses from students than the teacher." North Chicago at bottom At the bottom, North Chicago High School showed the biggest decrease in scores on the Prairie State Achievement Examination from 2006 to 2007. Only 15.3 percent of students met or exceeded state goals. The high school has a new principal, assistant principal and superintendent this year to steer the school through required restructuring plans. The freshman academy, a school within a school, is in its second year as part of the restructuring plan and aims to ease student transition into high school. A school improvement plan for next year includes smaller learning communities in the high school that would be theme based, such as engineering or military, said Robert Kieltyka, associate principal of North Chicago High School. Steady drop in Waukegan The percentage of Waukegan High School students meeting or exceeding standards on state tests has steadily dropped each year on the Prairie State Achievement Examination from 31.2 in 2002 to 25.7 this year, according to state report cards. To boost scores next year, district administrators are considering requiring three years of science in the high school instead of two years, assessing students prior to the state tests in the spring and breaking up the two high school campuses into 10 "houses" of 400 students. Waukegan High School Interim Principal Molly Schaefer said changes at the high school take time, and improvements at the elementary and middle school level will eventually work their way up to the high school. "It's really an 11-year-test," she said. Some 11th-graders take the ACT more seriously than the state standardized test which is taken on the second day of testing because the ACT is used by colleges to evaluate student applications. Waukegan High School Senior Salvador Baeza said he and other students focus more on the ACT because they want to go to college. "Mentally you think it's more important. You're more focused," he said. |
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