DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706210111

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 09   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Vanee Vines 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

SCHOOL BULLETIN BOARD - PORTSMOUTH

The district recently crafted a new way to size up each school's performance when it comes to picking which schools will get one of the annual Most-Improved School Awards.

On the whole, the new plan calls for the recognition of schools that give taxpayers and parents the most bang for the buck - by getting students to achieve well beyond a level that would be considered typical for that particular school.

Research Office Director Mary Yakimowski reviewed the plan with School Board members at Thursday's work session.

Several board members said they liked it. Yakimowski said the administration was moving forward with the new approach in time for the 1996-97 awards, which will be announced later this summer.

In the past, the district used several yardsticks - including test scores and attendance rates - to annually pick the one or two most-improved schools on the elementary, middle and high school levels. A special center would also get a most-improved award.

The new statistical approach turns up the heat mainly by setting an individual, overall performance target for each school or center.

It also takes into account a school's student-poverty rate and degree of student mobility.

Mobility refers to the extent of students enrolling at a school only to leave shortly thereafter - before teachers have had much time to make a difference in their achievement.

Some city educators had raised questions about the old method of determining how schools could get a most-improved award, which comes with a monetary prize for school initiatives ($1,000 for a center; and $3,000 for each school winner last year) and other gifts.

Among other things, the previous method didn't address changes in student demographics.

To come up with the school-by-school targets, which are essentially overall ratings, the district's new approach to judging performance uses four ``primary indicators'':

Standardized test scores.

Results on a state-mandated physical-fitness test.

Attendance rates.

And the percentage of ``action steps'' each school-improvement team ``successfully'' put in place. (School-improvement teams set goals annually and come up with ways, or steps, to reach them.)

In addition to factoring in mobility and poverty information, the targets also address parents' views of a school, as indicated on a parent survey.

After the number-crunching is done, schools that land at or beyond their targets will be recognized as ``high performing.''

Officials said the district would likely create a second category for ``successful schools'' that come close to targets. The ``most improved'' title would no longer exist.

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