By By ERIN VER BERKMOES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - The report cards are in and the Niles Community Schools have improved.
At Monday nights Niles Community Schools Board of Education meeting Jim Craig, director of curriculum and instruction for the district, made a presentation to the board as to how Niles schools did on this year's report card.
Grades are shown with the new score following last year's grade.
Howard Elementary, B-B
Oak Manor Elementary, B-B
Eastside Elementary, B-A
Ballard Elementary, B-A
Ring Lardner, C-B
Niles Senior High, C-B
The Michigan Department of Education began issuing annual report cards to schools. The grades received are part of the 2003 act with the No Child Left Behind act.
The grades are calculated based on MEAP status (how do the districts scores compare to other schools across the state), MEAP change (did the districts scored improve from last year and are they on tract to be 100 percent by the 2014 school year) and performance indicators (does the district have all of the conditions present for successful student achievement).
The MEAP test is taken in fourth, fifth, seventh, eight and eleventh grades.
The second part of the report cards is the Adequate Yearly Progress (YAP). This a measure required of all schools within the No Child Left Behind Act, and is federal law.
At Niles High School all the state averages were exceeded in the four core areas, which has never been done before.
At Ring Lardner, three out of the four core areas the students beat the state average and at the elementaries Niles is seeing growth in the scores, according to Craig.
Craig attributes the success of the students to a number of different things including the increased funds to Title One reading programs for at risk students at the elementary schools and, at the middle school and high school for the past year and a half the staff has engaged in a school improvement process where they design their own professional development and professional regiment which is dictated by the data from the students previous scores.