(August 12, 2011) - With the new school year set to begin next week, the Juneau School District is optimistic about upward trends being seen in student achievement data. This week, school principals and administrators are busy getting ready to welcome back teachers, preparing schools for the arrival of students, and reviewing student performance data.

Today, the State of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) released the 2011 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results to the public. The news for Juneau is encouraging. To meet AYP, each school must meet all of 31 set targets, a total of 434 for the district. Each year our district meets more of these measures, from 93% in 2009, to 94% last year and 95% this year.

Of the 14 Juneau School District schools measured, five schools - Juneau-Douglas High School, Auke Bay, Glacier Valley, Juneau Community Charter School, Johnson Youth Center - met all the targets of AYP this year. An additional three schools met 30 of their 31 targets and another three schools met 29 of the 30 targets.

In Alaska, AYP is measured using the Standards Based Assessment (SBA) written and required by DEED for students in grades 3 - 10. Juneau students continue to perform well overall compared to State of Alaska standards, but are also showing progress in reaching higher, national standards as measured by other tests.

For example, the Terra Nova, a national assessment taken by all 5^th and 7^th grade students, showed significant increases in performance in reading, language usage and in math.

SBA results show a 2.1% improvement in writing to 79.7% and 2.7% increase in science proficiency to 64.5% Reading and math were steady with reading down 1.2% to 83.5% proficiency and math up 0.8 % to 74.7%.

Students in most grades showed significant progress in reading and language usage on Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests taken during the year. Math MAP results showed the strongest measure of progress in the district – with every grade level improving over the course of the school year.

While achievement in math was up in the district overall, some schools experienced much bigger gains. On the SBA, Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School not only out performed the district, reaching over 80% proficiency rate for students, but saw improvement across all sub group populations.

Looking at the data, Principal Molly Yerkes says, “I am very pleased with the caliber of teaching we have here at Dzantik'i Heeni. Our test scores reflect our student's hard work and our teachers high expectations for achievement.”

This year, the DEED instituted a new way of calculating graduation rate in 5-year to 4-year measures. Juneau saw an increase in graduation rate in 2011 at 71.5% for four-year on-time graduation and 72.4% for five-year graduation rate.

AYP results are available on the DEED website, www.eed.state.ak.us/AYP/.

A more in-depth look at assessment results for the Juneau School District and each individual school will be provided to the public at the annual School Summit on August 25 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at Thunder Mountain High School. The Juneau School District’s comprehensive achievement report will be presented to the Board of Education in September.