7 school districts fail U.S. standard

Griffin only one to make grade in county

By Venice Buhain | The Olympian • Published August 29, 2008

• Links

LACEY – The North Thurston Public School district continues to be listed on an improvement plan after not meeting standards required under the federal No Child Left Behind law for the second year in a row.

Fifty-seven districts and 628 schools statewide are listed as needing improvement under No Child Left Behind in a preliminary report released Thursday by state Superintendent Terry Bergeson.

North Thurston was the only Thurston County district listed as needing improvement overall, but nearly all of the county's eight districts failed to meet federal benchmarks in at least one area, according to the report.

In Thurston County, only the Griffin School District, a small K-8 district with one school, was listed as having made Adequate Yearly Progress, which means it met all the federal benchmarks.

Fifteen Thurston County schools in four districts also fell short of meeting the benchmarks. Three of them — Pleasant Glade Elementary in North Thurston, Peter G. Schmidt in Tumwater and Rochester Middle in Rochester — must start improvement programs and allow families to transfer to other district schools, which is required by No Child Left Behind.

One of the 15 schools, Chinook Middle, missed the benchmark for special-education mathematics two years in a row, which would place it in the second level of improvement. But because Chinook does not receive federal Title 1 money for students from low-income families, the No Child Left Behind consequences will not apply.

Despite the lack of consequences for Chinook, the North Thurston district has put into place more special-education training for teachers there and will have additional after-school help for students struggling with math, another area in which the school did not meet federal benchmarks, district spokeswoman Courtney Schrieve said.

"It's the federal law and state guidelines, and you want your kids to improve," she said.

Parents at Pleasant Glade Elementary, which receives federal money for students from low-income families, did not express interest in having their children transfer to a different school, Schrieve said.