Parents of students at Caseyville Elementary School will have the option to transfer their child to another school within the Collinsville district. The move is because the school's students have failed to meet state benchmarks on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test for two years.
The school is the second in the Collinsville district to have to offer a transfer option. Kreitner Elementary School was required to offer school choice last year.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools that do not meet adequate yearly progress standards on student tests for two consecutive years are required to allow students to transfer to another school. According to the 2011 school report card, Caseyville and Kreitner Elementary School have both been placed in "improvement" status.
Students at Kreitner also have the option to receive additional tutoring from outside vendors because it has failed to meet progress standards for three consecutive years. That also places the school in a "corrective action" status, meaning it has to make changes to its staff or curriculum and submit an improvement plan to the Illinois State Board of Education. District Superintendent Bob Green said both staff and curriculum changes have been made at Kreitner.
"Right now Kreitner is our only school requiring remediation," Green said. "We changed the principal a couple of years ago. We've also focused a lot on ELL (English Language Learners). We're focusing on literacy at Kreitner, putting a lot of effort into reading and making sure they're at grade level — those are the curriculum changes."
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Julie Brown said of the 354 students at Kreitner who were eligible to receive tutoring last year, only 10 requested the service. And only 15 of the 381 eligible students transferred to another school.
Brown said she believes it may be because parents are more comfortable with their home school.
"I think a lot of it is just the unknown," Brown said.
The 2011 school report card, issued by the Illinois State Board of Education last week, shows that of the Collinsville school district's nine elementary schools, Summit and Jefferson have met testing standards. Both the high school and middle school did not meet testing requirements.
"The district is also developing a improvement plan," Green said. "Basically it's what we had planned to do anyway. Based on research, we're developing a plan, a time line and who is responsible for what. Then we just need to get it implemented."
Contact reporter Ramona C. Sanders at 618-344-0264, ext. 136
