Murrieta Valley Unified Identifies Areas For Improvement

More staff development and a focus on English language learners.

The two go hand-in-hand and are at the forefront of what officials in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District discovered is needed to live up to federal benchmarks set under the No Child Left Behind Act. Nearly six months have passed since the district was placed in Program Improvement status based on its 2011 standardized test results.

Since then, the district's Educational Services Department has led the way in conducting district and school-level assessments. It must now return its findings—and goals—to the California Department of Education.

"Our staff was able to take an honest look at how we are doing business," said Guy Romero, assistant superintendent of educational services, in a Feb. 9 presentation before the school board.

The district was placed in year one of Program Improvement when it came shy of proficiency levels for math and English language arts among five of its subgroups for the second year in a row. The federal proficiency level, also known as Adequate Yearly Progress, increases 5 to 10 percent each year, and was set at 67 percent for 2011.

English language learners in Murrieta Valley Unified missed the mark by 27.8 percent in English language arts and 18.6 percent in math. African Americans missed math proficiency by 15.3 percent and language arts by 6.9 percent. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students failed to meet proficiency in math by 9.6 percent and language arts by 11.3 percent. Students with disabilities came up 17.7 percent short in language arts and 18.5 percent short in math.

The district's graduation rate also declined, from 91.89 percent in 2010, to 88.82 percent in 2011.

The first thing the district did was pour through its testing data, where Romero said they found 50-60 data clean-ups—mostly for tests that were coded wrong by students or for ethnicity that was marked inaccurately.

"Our data is not only accurate, it has integrity and there is no manipulation," Romero said. ""I would argue that what you are seeing is statistically what you would expect to see."

Then an Academic Programs Survey was conducted by school principals.

"Everyone was very honest in what they provided," Romero said.

Next came the goal-setting. Goal one is to ensure staff is trained to teach newly adopted curriculum to the English language learner population.

"Staff development time has been taken away," with the budget crisis, Romero said.

While taking in Romero's presentation, board members said they saw the effects of having to cut back on staff development time while experiencing lean budget years.

"Without continued staff development, we pay a price," said Board member Margi Wray. "This kind of illustrates that, it makes it very apparent...it puts a different focus on the budget thing in my mind."

Goal two was to train staff for Algebra 1 interventions, and to provide subsidiary materials.

Goal three was to expand access for students through online learning and learning centers.

Goal four was to continue and increase staff development in professional learning community environments.

"This is not set on a shelf and never looked at again," Romero said. "It is a two-year document. To make substantial growth in a subgroup—that does not occur in a year."

The district must meet proficiency levels for two years in a row to be moved out of Program Improvement.

"We are going to have a whole new level of curriculum," Romero said. "I hope that we have the funding to train our staff to do it."

Superintendent Dr. Stan Scheer expressed frustration over the increasing demands to measure up to state and federal government standards, with little to no financial backing.

"We didn't just go through this for the fun of it," Scheer said. "I'm not sure if the levels of government understand how seriously we take this. There should be funding but there's not and it is shameful...we take seriously our accountability but the people who (are putting this on us) are not being held accountable."