Attempting to shed the state’s negative label of a “District In Need of Improvement,” the Tarrytown School District has begun a series of initiatives that will include administrators, teachers and parents.

While the district is moving to improve its status, questions are being raised at both the federal and the state level about the fairness of the designation for some school systems.

Caught in an accelerating pursuit of the deadline set by federal law requiring all students to be “proficient” in English language and math by 2014, the district’s middle school is among 44% of New York State schools which have not met the English language requirements. The percentage jumped from just 7% three years ago, and includes 16 Westchester schools among the more than 1,500 under the target.

The status is the result of scores in annual English and math tests provided by the state for students in grades three to eight, and in high school.

While goals are set for all students, the focus of the district’s challenges, however, lies in the middle school, and is among students in so-called subgroups. Subgroup categories include ethnicity, economic disadvantaged, limited English language proficiency and a disability classification.

Pursuit of the tests’ goals, set up as the result of the 2004 federal No Child Left Behind act, has become a race against time, with the target date just three years ahead for all students to be proficient in both English and math. The criteria set by the state has become more demanding as the deadline nears, according to Dr. Howard Smith, the district’s superintendent. In a recent letter to parents, he wrote, “the performance targets for students overall and for student subgroups are raised higher every year.”

“It is not like our students weren’t advancing but the rate of advancement that was required to get this far, is accelerating dramatically,” Smith said.

School Board President Joseph Lillis said the district “was not taking designation lightly;” however, he emphasized that “it was important for the community to have the problem put into the proper context.” He attributed the situation to a small core of students. Lillis noted that “what happened is that a subgroup of 40 plus kids caused the entire district to be labeled the way it is.”

A presentation by the administration made last month at a board meeting for parents indicated that, in fact, had 42 additional students in subgroups, “out of the 1,114 students who took the grades 3 to 8 English Language Arts exam,” achieved a higher proficiency score, the district would have been in good standing.

The crux of the problem, Lillis said, was clearly that, “With a constant stream of kids coming in with limited English proficiency in the early years, it is difficult to get them up the level of standards set.”

“Look at the demographics,” Smith said. “Last year, we had 114 new students come in during the school year, and of that number 54 had limited English proficiency. Most started school somewhere else, and not with a comparable level of education. Not only are they not coming in not speaking English, but if they are a fifth grader, maybe they are coming in functioning at a second grade level,” Smith stated.

The superintendent explained that the district has “a significant percentage of students” who fall under ethnicity, English language deficiency and economically disadvantaged subgroups and they often overlap.

Given the demographics, Smith said, “...it is a tribute to the teachers and staff and what they are doing for the kids, and the programs we do have, that it took this long to fall short of the requirements.”

In the context of overall achievement, Lillis insisted that the Tarrytown district students do well. “Our experience has shown that over time, the longer these kids stay in our district, the more proficient they become,” he noted. “By the time they are in high school they are passing the regents exams and they are graduating and 90% plus are going off to college, “ Lillis said.

Supporting that view, Smith asserted that, “By just comparing last year to the year before, we know that our rate of improvement in grades 3 to 8 in overall performance was greater than the rate of improvement of both the county and the state.”

In light of the mounting number of schools failing to keep pace with the increasing requirements, the state is considering asking the federal government next month for a waiver that could apply to schools meeting certain criteria, according to a State Department of Education spokesperson. New York would then have authorization to set up its own standards to determine schools in need of improvement.

Smith described the criteria as possibly “acknowledging the reality which is recognizing growth without necessarily putting these artificial expectations that have to be met by the 2014 date which is an arbitrary deadline, not scientifically derived.” As he wrote to parents, the waiver would serve as a “means of allowing more credit for the improvement that student subgroups in districts such as ours have been demonstrating almost every year.”

Despite what the alternatives might be, as Smith wrote, the district “...is assembling a School Quality Review team of middle school personnel to prepare a report analyzing factors associated with the performance of the Limited English Language subgroup.” It has also begun to seek solutions by setting up a task force, as described by Smith, with representatives of teachers, the board, parents and administrators. It will meet this month. “The idea is to determine how we can collaborate to find ways within the limits of what resources we have now to work together to improve students’ performance even more.”

The schools, Lillis said, want to tap further into community expertise and volunteers. Faced with a budget limited by a tax cap, and to expand its resources, the district will be looking for more help in grant writing, assistance from parents perhaps tutoring students who need extra help, and looking at methods that may not have been utilized, “particularly with technology, computer programming, enhancements that would give kids a better opportunity to advance at a more aggressive rate,” as Smith explained.

“In looking for a silver lining in these things,” Lillis said, “ I think it did bring forth a group of parents who have stepped up and said what can we do to help to rectify these issues, and what can we do to address them.”