Low performance scores on Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exams administered to special education students caused a few Denton County school districts to fail federal accountability standards this week.

Preliminary scores for the Adequate Yearly Progress, an accountability rating system released Tuesday by the Texas Education Agency, are based on federal standards. Despite earning “academically acceptable” ratings from the state in August, the Ponder, Pilot Point and Sanger school districts failed to meet federal guidelines. Three campuses apiece in the Denton and Sanger school districts also failed to meet the requirements.

The Argyle, Aubrey, Denton, Krum and Lake Dallas school districts met federal requirements, according to the reports.

The Denton school district this year made gains in its academic performances despite receiving a rating below federal standards at Denton High School and Calhoun and McMath middle schools because of low scores on math in the special education category. Low performance scores in math for Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students at Denton High also contributed to the campus missing the mark, district officials said.

Ray Braswell, district superintendent, said that while he’s “very, very pleased” with overall ratings, he knows adjustments will need to be made to meet requirements next year.

Braswell questioned the appropriateness of special education testing. All special education students are taught on an instructional level, but they’re tested at their grade level, he said.

“For us to turn around and assess them on a standardized plan, it just doesn’t work. Their instruction needs to be specialized to their need,” Braswell said. “How can you individualize the instruction these students receive without individualizing the assessments? A one-size-fits-all accountability system does not work for these students.”

Federal accountability standards are based on attendance rates for elementary schools, participation and passing rates on state exams in grades three through eight and grade 10, graduation rates for high schools and substantial performance improvement for districts, according to TEA.

Standards indicated that elementary and middle schools had to earn 90 percent attendance ratings while high schools and districts had to post graduation rates of at least 70 percent in 2007.

The TEA reported that districts and schools were required to test at least 95 percent of their student bodies and have at least 60 percent of the students pass state reading/English language arts tests, while 50 percent had to pass math exams.

Based on the standards, school districts and each individual campus are evaluated in seven subgroups for performance on state exams.

The subgroups are black, Hispanic, white, economically disadvantaged, special education and limited English proficient (LEP) students, and all students.

Students may be counted in more than one subcategory.

The AYP rating, which was created in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Education, follows criteria set in President Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

By the 2013-14 school year, federal law will require schools that accept Title I money for low-income students to have a 100 percent proficiency rating on math and reading exams.

Sanger Superintendent Jack Biggerstaff said this is the first year his district has failed to meet federal requirements.

Performance on special education TAKS exams in math and reading also caused campuses like Clear Creek In­ter­mediate School to fail to meet federal standards for the first time.

Sanger Middle School missed meeting the standards for the first time in two years in reading on the special education exam, he said.

Biggerstaff said he’s “certainly disappointed with the re­sults” and believes the campuses and the district failed to meet AYP requirements because of the type of TAKS exam being given to special education students. Within the next year, he said, the district will work to ensure it meets AYP requirements.

“We’re going to have to put improvement plans together and have strategies to improve in areas of [the] special education subpopulation to show we meet the criteria for AYP, and those strategies are already being put in place,” he said.

Prior to spring 2008, special education students took state exams based on their individual instruction. Federal requirements mandated that the students be tested at their actual grade level, an exam that some districts believe is harder for students to pass.

TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said Texas requested an amendment to provide modified exams for special education students that included the TAKS Accommodated, TAKS-Modified and TAKS-Alternate, a test given to students with significant cognitive disabilities. All three tests were offered last spring. A provision in the law stated that only 2 percent of a school’s students could be counted as proficient by taking the TAKS-Modified and 1 percent by taking TAKS-Alternate, Culbertson said.

In addition to the district as a whole and two other campuses, the Sanger school district’s Linda Tutt High School failed to meet federal standards because of graduation rates. Biggerstaff said he believed the school met the criteria on accountability standards and the district planned to appeal the judgment within a few days. The deadline for districts to appeal the ratings is Oct. 24.

“We feel like we’ll be successful on the appeal,” he said.

Officials with the Ponder and Pilot Point school districts, which also failed to meet AYP requirements, could not be reached for comment.

Statewide, fewer districts and schools failed to meet federal requirements. The TEA reported that 6,122 state schools, or 75 percent, and 816 Texas school districts, or 66 percent, earned a “Meets AYP” rating for 2008. This year’s evaluation also showed that 399 school districts and charters and 1,160 schools received a “Missed AYP” rating for failing to meet performance standards. Last year, 6,447 campuses, or 80 percent, met federal requirements while 1,069 districts, or 87 percent, did the same.

Culbertson said an increased testing pool and new requirements on exams can affect statewide performance percentages and cause a downturn for some districts and campuses. She said that while it is troubling that several districts and campuses did not meet AYP ratings this year, the state is working toward getting students to a 100 percent proficiency rating, which is the goal of No Child Left Behind. Along the way to achieving that, there may be “bumps in the system,” Culbertson said.

“We’re confident that with more training and more work with the curriculum … that the districts will be able to meet these challenges, but it is a concern and we will continue to work with them,” she said.

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com .

To view how other campuses and districts fared statewide, visit www.tea.state.tx.us/ayp/2008/distcampfinal08.pdf .