School Improvements

Of the more than 1,100 public schools in the state, 325 didn`t meet the requirements of the act, and several of those schools are in Northwest Arkansas...with one right here in Fayetteville. The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to improve their test scores each year. This year, the disabilities program at Ramay Jr. High didn`t. "There`s a population of students who are identified under federal guidelines for needing special services because of learning disabilities and of those students, a large number didn`t score proficient. And because they didn`t meet adequate yearly progress in that sub-population only, Ramey Jr. High was placed in first year school improvement," said Associate Superintendent Randy Willison. Ramay landed with 37 other Arkansas schools in the "needs improvement" category...and now federal law requires Ramay to offer their disabled students the option of attending Woodland Jr. High. "Most people who attend there like the faculty and the administrators, and they like being at Ramay Jr. High so we don`t anticipate a lot of people asking for that," Willison said. So what do administrators plan to do to pull ramay up and off the needs improvement list? Willison says administrators will try to figure out what areas the students have trouble with and brainstorm about how they can help all students succeed. "We`re just basically talking about what we can do to help the kids, a lot of it is analysis of data, we`re going to look at the scores...and try to find everything we can possibly do to help all students be successful, especially these students."