Schools

Novi in Top 10 Percent of Schools with Widest Achievement Gaps in Michigan

Novi administration says that the information is already known to them and that they have been working on closing the gap for years.

Today the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) released its school report cards, which includes which schools made the state's standards for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), as well as a list of the top 10 percent of schools with the widest achievement gaps.

because of subgroup graduation rates, and seven of its eight buildings were identified as having some of the widest achievement gaps in the state. This means there were drastic variances in the academic  achievement between the top 30 percent of students and the bottom 30 percent each of the schools.

The MDE has labeled the schools "focus schools," one of three new school designations the state identified as a result of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) . Not every school fits into one of these categories. The other two categories are as follows:

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Reward Schools: The top five percent of all Michigan schools in the annual top-to-bottom ranking and the top five percent making the greatest academic progress over the past four years.

Priority Schools: Previously called persistently lowest achieving schools, these are now identified as those in the bottom five percent of the annual top-to-bottom ranking and any high school with a graduation rate of less than 60 percent for three consecutive years. There were 146 priority schools identified this year. These schools will be required to come up with a plan to improve.  None of them are in Brighton.

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Every Novi school except was named a focus school.In addition to Novi, there are 351 more focus schools located in 175 different school districts across Michigan.

“We are committed to closing the achievement gaps in all of our schools for all of our students,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan in a press release. “With this measure of transparency, schools will be identified and held accountable for the achievement of all of their students.”

The MDE plans to develop and provide a District Toolkit for districts that have focus schools. MDE will provide technical assistance to these districts on the use of the toolkits in the form of MDE-trained and paid-for District Improvement Facilitators.

With the assistance of these facilitators, districts will have one year to self-diagnose and self-prescribe customized changes in their supports to the focus schools and their students. There are escalating supports and consequences for focus schools that do not close their achievement gaps.

Novi Superintendent Dr. Steve Matthews said the state is not telling them anything they didn't already know, and that the report will not change what the district is already doing to address the gaps.

When Matthews came on as superintendent last year, he made closing the achievement gaps one of .

Matthews said one of the reasons the gap is large is because Novi has some very high performing students, making the top end of achievement for Novi very high.

He said Novi also has a group of students that doesn't achieve highly for a variety of reasons. 

"We have an ESL population that has continued to increase because they understand they get a lot of support in our district. We have a lot of foreign companies that have headquarters in our district, and those students come to our district and stay two or three years and then go back home," he said.

Matthews said the district has been focusing on the achievement gaps for two years and have accelerated its focus in the past year. So why, Matthews said some might ask, does it not seem that the gaps are closing?

"Our student population continues to be diverse and continues to get more diverse," Matthews said. "There are families in Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties who look around and say 'Which district can meet the needs of my children?' And they move to Novi because they understand we can meet the needs of their children by the level of support we provide," Matthews said.

The district continues to work on closing the gap by doing things like working to align its curriculum, testing students twice a year using the NWEA, building a comprehensive K-12 plan for addressing the needs of students performing below grade level, creating opportunities for students to receive additional academic support, and implementing diversity and social justice training for the staff.

Novi also added two new administrative positions to aid with student growth last year. Director of Student Growth and Accountability Nick Kalakailo is responsible for collecting and sharing assessment data from teachers across the district and evaluating teachers and administrators. Title I/ESL Coordinator/Facilitator Alice Smith works with teachers to improve instructional practice with Novi's growing population of economically disadvantaged and ESL students.

"The difference [in student achievement] in our district is large, we're not going to deny that...Our goal is to bring the lower students up, but at the same time continue to provide opportunities for those high students that continue to be high-performing," Matthews said.

Matthews said Novi takes pride in being a diverse community. 

"Some districts don't have that complexity, and at this point it feels like we're being punished because we're trying to address the complexity in our district and instead of embracing and celebrating the diversity, people are going to look at our diversity as a negative, and I don't want that to be the message," Matthews said.

Assistant Superintendent for Academic Services RJ Webber said nearby schools in the county might not be named focus schools like Novi because their top end is not as high-achieving, therefore the gap is not as big.

All of Novi's schools are in the top third in Michigan, and some of its elementaries are in the top 15 percent.

Matthews said he believes , and elementaries would have been named reward schools if the district had made AYP, but because the district did not, none of its schools are allowed to be named reward schools.

Webber said the labels by the state are not helpful, and he doesn't want parents to be worried about it.

"We're concerned that parents wake up and see that we have these focus schools and that they're concerned about the schools in their community in ways that we don't believe they need to be, and that's frustrating for us," Webber said.


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