The state of California has assigned the Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) Program Improvement (PI) status for the 2015-16 school year after the disabilities subgroup did not meet the state participation requirement rate for a state mandated test during the 2013-14 school year.
The disabilities subgroup is defined as students who are in an individual education program.
To meet the state requirements for participation, the whole district and each subgroup must have a participation rate of 95 percent. According to an email sent to parents on July 22 from Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Tara Taupier, the District’s disabilities subgroup had participation rates of 94 and 92 percent on two different subtests of the state mandated testing.
The disabilities subgroup was the only subgroup that did not meet the participation rate, the reason for which is unknown.
PI status is only given to districts and schools that accept Title I funding and that did not meet the participation requirement rate.
“Title I funding comes from the government specifically for students who are either socioeconomically or academically disadvantaged,” Taupier said. “[The District doesn’t] get a lot of Title I funding, but we get a little and because [the District] takes Title I funding at all, we are subjected to [PI status].”
Unlike Redwood, the Tamalpais, Drake, and San Andreas high schools each receive Title I funding, which is granted based on the size of the socioeconomically or academically disadvantaged population. About 8 percent of the district’s student population falls into this category.
Individual schools can also be given PI status; however, Redwood as a school could never fall into PI status because it does not receive Title I funds.
Recently, the district has not met the participation requirement rates of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), a new testing system that has replaced the state mandated assessments that put the district into PI status, according to the email Taupier sent to parents.
The CAASPP test was created by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) in alignment with the common core standards, according to a presentation from a TUHSD Board of Trustees Meeting on March 24.
This test was taken by 11th graders during the 2014-15 school year. Neither the District as a whole nor any of the high schools within the District met the 95 percent participation requirement rate; therefore, Taupier anticipates remaining in PI status for the 2016-17 school year.
Taupier said that parents waiving their students out of testing decreases the district’s participation and is a reason why the district did not reach the 95 percent participation goal.
“It’s not like [the students waived] are removed from the population and don’t count at all—they count as a non-participant,” Taupier said.
According to Taupier, both Redwood and Drake high schools had at least 10 percent of the junior class waive out of testing.
The district is currently working on a plan to increase participation rates.
“Part of it is communication out to families to indicate how important participation rates are and to make sure all families understand that a waiver counts as a non-participation for the district,” Taupier said.
