A recent report indicated several of the schools in the Lakes Region have failed to meet yearly progress requirements required by the federally mandated No Child Left Behind act.

The Bush administration-initiated act is designed to aid every demographic within the public school system by targeting weak areas of academia and initiate education procedures in an attempt to boost testing results in those needed areas.

Windham fared well across the board in the report, released earlier this week by the Maine Department of Education. Bonny Eagle School District suffered setbacks at the middle school and George E. Jack Elementary in Standish.

George E. Jack has been put on monitoring status for failing to meet adequate yearly progress for students with disabilities. The middle school is listed as a Continuous Improvement Priority Two School, meaning the school must make adequate yearly progress for three consecutive years to be removed.

In Raymond, Jordan Small Middle School failed in the category of average daily attendance and has been put on monitoring status as a result.

The act separates school children into five categories: American Indian/Alaskan Native, African American/Black, Economically Disadvantaged, Limited English Proficient, and Students with Disabilities. The school as a whole is also studied and processed, as well as its daily attendance numbers.

SAD 61 Assistant Superintendent Kathleen Beecher said of the process, “It’s tough to make improvements from year to year. For instance, if you have a kid with a learning disability, you’re already struggling to meet the standard. And the standards in Maine are very high.”

The standards vary from state to state, as they are derived from local data rather than by basing targets on the calculated national curve. The Students with Disabilities category is what the report shows as Lake Region’s concern.

“Another problem is that it’s just one day in the life of a kid,” Beecher said, speaking about the testing practices.

The school district is taking strides to rectify the situation. “We are using a lot of resources,” she said. The school has been working with an education consultant originally out of Nebraska. Consultant Jeannene Mason was contracted to consult and train math teachers in the school district in an attempt to revamp the math curriculum.

Mason helped create a curriculum that has been adopted and piloted by several of the math teachers in the district, and is now being adopted by the entire district. The program is proactive.

Lake Region School District is also taking assessments and applying that information to the curriculum for earlier grades in an attempt at thwarting the problem at the source, so that future school children do not suffer from the same learning curve deficiencies the present failing groups have suffered from.

“We’re taking a very comprehensive hands-on approach,” Beecher said. “Not all kids learn in the same way. There are different learning and different teaching approaches for different people. We’re trying to give kids a variety of approaches to a problem.”

Beecher explained that one problem is in the learning process for teachers. “Teachers tend to have learned something in one way, and then they teach it in the same way.” The school is looking into continued education for instructors, so that they too are thinking of more than one side of the box.

The district chose to be evaluated every other year. The school also works with the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to help all children learn. Beecher said one key-strength in working with the association is the speed of testing results.

“We can get them the next day, online through a private internet address,” Beecher said. Instead of waiting up to a half-a-year for test results, or an entire year to be assessed again, the school can track learning progress on a much more frequent basis.