District Report Card

The federal No Child Left Behind education law requires schools to make student achievement, school accountability and teacher quality information available to the public each year. You will find links below that provide that information.

As measures of student achievement, Maine students in grades 3-8 participate in the New England Common Assessment Program, which assesses reading and math annually. In addition, students in grades 5 and 8 are assessed by New England Common Assessments in writing and Maine Educational Assessments in science. In their junior year of high school, students take Maine High School Assessments, which are made up of the SAT tests for math, reading and writing, and the Maine Educational Assessment for science.

As a means of addressing school accountability, the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law requires that an increasing percentage of students achieve proficiency in reading and math each year. By the year 2014, all students are expected to show proficiency in grades 3-8 and in grade 11 in reading and math. Each year, the NCLB raises the bar for the percentage of students who must demonstrate proficiency and uses that as the measure of Adequate Yearly Progress. Student performance data is evaluated against that percentage. Not only must a grade as a whole demonstrate proficiency at the level set by NCLB, but various subgroups must also demonstrate that level of proficiency. Subgroups focus on specific groups within any grade, based on such components as special education status, socioeconomic status, gender, English language proficiency and ethnicity. In instances where a group fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years in a row, the school must participate in an improvement plan if it receives federal Title I funds.

Information about teacher quality relates to both state certification and new federal “highly qualified” standards. In order to teach in Maine, a teacher must hold valid state certification. With NCLB, federal guidelines were created to determine whether a teacher is highly qualified. Because the two sets of rules are not the same, it is possible for a teacher to hold state certification for his or her position, but not meet highly qualified standards. In such instances, teachers must work towards meeting those federal standards. Parents have the right to request information about the qualifications of their child's teacher and can do so by contacting the building principal.