Six Mehlville schools met annual proficiency targets on the 2010 state assessment, according to preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Oakville Senior High School and Beasley, Blades, Hagemann, Oakville and Rogers elementary schools achieved adequate yearly progress, or AYP, on the 2010 Missouri Assessment Program — MAP — test.

The six schools achieved AYP because they met the annual proficiency targets for communication arts and math across eight student subgroups: All Students, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic, White, Students with an Individualized Education Program, Students Receiving Free or Reduced Price Lunches and Students with Limited English Proficiency.

However, the Mehlville School District as a whole did not achieve AYP in 2010 under the guidelines of the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The goal of NCLB is to have 100 percent of U.S. students perform at the proficient or advanced levels on state tests by 2014.

Therefore, school districts must meet annually increasing proficiency targets in communication arts and math to achieve AYP.

“We completely agree with the premise of No Child Left Behind, but to have that impossible standard that every child has to be ‘above-average’ breeds disrespect and contempt for the process,” Superintendent Terry Noble said. “I just encourage the staff to continue to do their very best.”

For a Missouri school or school district to meet AYP, proficiency targets in both communication arts and math must be met on the MAP test by all student subgroups.

If a subgroup in one school does not meet the NCLB-mandated proficiency target on one of the two subjects, the school — along with the entire school district — does not meet AYP that year.

This year’s proficiency targets were 67.4 percent of students performing at the proficient or advanced levels in communication arts and 63.3 percent of students performing at proficient or advanced levels in math.

Overall, 62.2 percent of Mehlville students performed at the proficient or advanced level in communications arts on the 2010 MAP test, and 61.1 percent performed at the proficient or advanced level in math.

While those scores fell short of the annual proficiency targets, they exceeded the state averages of 53.6 percent for communication arts and 52.7 percent for math. They also improved over the district’s 2009 MAP test scores of 57.7 percent in communication arts and 59.4 percent in math.

“I seldom ever get a call about AYP,” Noble said. “Now, when you start comparing us to other districts — our scores to other districts, how we compare there — that’s another matter. But just to talk about the AYP itself, I very rarely get a concern about it. And I think the reason is because you can see how the district does overall. That’s what most people really want to see.

“When you start dividing the student body into subgroups — even though I understand why it’s done, because otherwise you can’t show how you’re meeting the needs of the students — there are some school districts with pretty strong reputations that are going to be on that failing list. If they’re not now, they’re going to be, because I don’t understand how you get 100 percent of students ‘above-average.'”

Mehlville did achieve AYP in the “all students” subgroup in both communication arts and math this year with the use of the growth model, which tracks an individual student’s achievement compared with the student’s established growth target.

The growth model gives schools and school districts the opportunity to meet AYP by receiving credit for students who have demonstrated improvement over a period of time.

State and district MAP scores and AYP results can be viewed in their entirety at

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