Riverside-Brookfield High School made adequate yearly progress in the 2008-09 school year, according to the Illinois School Report Card issued by the Illinois State Board of Education. The report card noted a sharp rebound in the scores of Hispanic students, reversing a one-year decline.
The school report cards, which must be published each year, measure the performance of high school juniors on the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). Students are tested in reading, math and science.
In reading 75.1 percent of RB juniors read at or above state standards; in math 73.3 percent scored at or above state standards; and in science 71.5 percent scored at or above state standards.
RB’s scores far exceeded state averages. Statewide, only 56.9 percent of juniors met or exceeded state averages in reading, 51.6 percent in math and 50.5 percent in science.
And RB did better than state averages despite having almost all its juniors take the test. The Chicago Tribune recently reported that statewide about 20 percent of the previous year’s sophomores did not take the PSAE as juniors. But at RB only 14 of 365 juniors, about 4 percent, did not take the PSAE last spring, according to District 208 Interim Superintendent David Bonnette.
Bonnette said that RB classifies as a junior any student who has completed 10 credits and allows students who have completed 9.5 credits to take the PSAE in their junior year.
RB’s biggest improvement in 2009 came in performance of its Hispanic students, who make up 18.6 percent of RB’s total enrollment, according to the school report card.
In 2009, 77 percent of RB’s Hispanic students read at or above state standards compared to only 40 percent of RB’s Hispanic students in 2008.
In math, 67.8 percent of Hispanic students met or exceeded state standards in 2009 compared to 57 percent in 2008. In science 59 percent of Hispanic students at RB met or exceeded state standards this year compared to just 46 percent in 2008.
School officials attribute the improvement in scores of Hispanic students to intensive efforts, including before- and after-school study groups and increased parental involvement.
“In the ’08-’09 school year the district really focused on working with kids in that subgroup, “Bonnette said. “We’re pleased, very much so, with the improvement in that group and with the fact that we made adequate yearly progress in all categories.”
Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools are required to hit specific benchmarks for the student body as a whole and for certain subgroups.
But schools are judged only on subgroups that have at least 45 students in them. RB had only 27 juniors with disabilities and only 14 black juniors. If those groups had been counted for adequate yearly progress purposes, RB would not have made the grade.
Among RB juniors with disabilities in 2009, 70 percent were below state standards in reading, 75 percent below state standards in math, and 85 percent below state standards in science.
Still, RB students with disabilities outperformed state averages. Statewide 83.1 students with disabilities were below state standards in reading, 87.9 percent in math, and 86.1 percent in science.
The majority of black juniors at RB also struggled on the PSAE, with 69.2 percent scoring below state standards in both reading and science and 61.6 percent below state standards in math.
No black student at RB scored at the highest level, exceeding standards, on the PSAE in 2009, according to the school report card. But black students at RB outperformed black students statewide in all three subjects.
Bonnette said that RB needs to put the same effort it has put into improving Hispanic test scores into improving the performance of students in other subgroups, even if there are not enough students in those groups to count under toward adequate yearly progress designation under No Child Left Behind.
“We need to focus to the same extent on some of these other groups, whether it be African Americans, low income, special education. We need to focus on them in the same manner as we did with the Hispanic group of students,” Bonnette said.