Shikellamy High School has been flagged four consecutive years for failing to hit state targets on standardized tests, and if the pattern repeats one more time, the state would have the authority to take over operation of the district, a Pennsylvania Department of Education spokeswoman said.

“Within the state law, there is the possibility that governance changes could be ordered,” Leah Harris, the education spokeswoman, said Friday.

“It’s rare,” but it has happened, usually because school districts were faced with both academic and financial crises.

Both the Harrisburg and Philadelphia school districts are operated by the cities’ governments. The Duquesne School District in western Pennsylvania is run by the state.

Five miss state goals

Shikellamy High School, Sunbury, is one of five schools in four Valley districts that missed state goals on standardized tests last year, administrators said.

The Selinsgrove Area Middle School, Milton middle and high schools and Midd-West High School also failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals established under Pennsylvania’s No Child Left Behind plan. The results are not scheduled to be released to the public until later this month, but schools have been notified of how they did.

Midd-West Superintendent Wesley Knapp pointed to the unsatisfactory test results at Midd-West High School last week, when he suggested that students should not be allowed to take field trips unless they are explicitly educational. Administrators in other districts said the standardized testing is pushing schools to cut similar questionable uses of student instructional time.

No Child Left Behind was implemented in 2003. It was designed to hold schools accountable and empower parents in closing the achievement gap in the nation’s schools. Critics say it’s a “one-size-fits-all” approach that overemphasizes testing and doesn’t provide enough money to help schools achieve success.

Valley schools improve

In the years since the state began measuring student achievement under No Child Left Behind, the number of local schools missing state targets has fallen by 50 percent — from 10 to five.

Statewide, in 2007, benchmarks called for 54 percent of students to pass reading requirements and 45 percent to pass the math test to clear Adequate Yearly Progress goals. Now until 2010, 63 percent need to pass reading, and 56 percent must pass math.

Those percentages will be 72 percent for reading and 67 percent for math in 2011, according to Cathy Moser, the Lewisburg Area School District’s supervisor of curriculum and instruction. In the final three years of the program, the requirement spikes about 10 percent per year until it reaches 100 percent in 2014.

Shikellamy develops plan

To boost scores at Shikellamy High School, the district was compelled to develop a two-year school improvement plan, crafted with input from parents, teachers and other stakeholders. With the school’s repeated poor performance, the district must change its curriculum, Harris said.

One of the curriculum changes put into place at Shikellamy occurred in the elementary and middle school grades as the district has tried to beef up math instruction before students reach high school, said Brian Taylor, a teacher assigned to work with administrators on the high school’s recovery plan.

The biggest thorn has been low test scores from low-income students, he said. In addition to the curriculum changes, school staff members have been working to convince the entire student population that academic performance and test-taking are important, he said.

‘Subgroup’ lowers numbers

In Selinsgrove, the middle school landed on the warning list last year, one year after the intermediate school was identified as not meeting the grade on test scores. This year, the intermediate school in Selinsgrove hit the state targets.

Director of Curriculum Chad Cohrs said the middle school was identified due to the test scores of what he described as a “subgroup” of students. Asked if the test scores of the same subgroup of students might have been responsible for the intermediate school’s warning status in the 2007-08 school year, Cohrs said that appears to have been a factor.

District officials have been working with those students to help them improve their test scores, he said.

Kids have different abilities

Milton Area School District Superintendent William Clark said variations in scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests from year to year reflect the varying abilities of the students. In Milton, the Baugher Elementary School reached its 2009 Adequate Yearly Progress goals after being in warning status last year, but both the Milton Middle School and Milton Area Senior High School were placed in “school improvement” status this year.

“You have different kids taking the tests, and they have different abilities,” Clark said. “Our goal is to try to keep all the kids up, to not lose our momentum.”

But often that’s a difficult task.

Clark said the scores of special education students pulled down both schools. He said neither school had 40 or more special education students, the number at which they are counted as a separate group. Since their scores were counted among the rest, they brought down the percentages.

Throughout the summer, teachers in his district have been taking part in two-day Learning Focused Schools training, a set of instructional strategies and workshops that help teachers find ways to provide better instruction to students, Clark said.

Secret to success?

It may not be the secret of its success, but in the past year, the Line Mountain School District overhauled its math program, according to Superintendent Dick Campbell. It now is studying its curriculum in an attempt to close the achievement gap it is seeing at the 11th grade, he said.

Eighty-five percent of Line Mountain third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders and 70 percent of seventh-, eighth- and 11th-graders are passing math. The district will continue its efforts there, Campbell said, but also focus on raising the bar in the reading program.

Hard work aids Warrior Run

It’s the fourth consecutive year of success for the Warrior Run School District and “... the result of a lot of hard work,” said Superintendent Daniel Sheaffer.

In 2003, when he came to the district, Sheaffer said the middle school was on warning and the entire district was in the improvement category.

“There was no quick fix, but there have been big changes since then,” he said. “We’ve had a consistent focus on the tests.”

Sheaffer said the math curriculum, in particular, has come in for a lot of attention. The easy courses have been eliminated, and every student at the high school level is required to take algebra and geometry classes. There also has been renewed emphasis on professional development.

“We’ve had good support from the faculty and administration, as well as a supportive community,” he said. “Our focus has been consistent, and the kids take it seriously. They’ve accepted the challenge.”

Over the next several years, professional development will continue to emphasize integrating technology to help students learn.

“We’re getting better every year,” Sheaffer said. “The hard part will be getting to 100 percent in the next five years.”

Danville refines curriculum

Danville Superintendent Susan Bickford said her district made changes with respect to reading and math instruction, making it more hands-on.

“We ... continue to refine and really adapt the curriculum to fit with the needs of our students,” she said. “We’re seeing positive gains in reading. We will emphasize writing with the little ones. We feel we need to do a better job on the elementary level, and we want to work on them doing well at younger ages.”

Overall, “it’s a lot of number crunching,” said Lewisburg’s Moser. And school district officials can appeal if they think their assessment is wrong. Some of those appeals have prevailed, she said.

-- This story included reporting by staff writers Karen Blackledge, Tricia Pursell, Wayne Laepple and Rick Dandes and city editor John Finnerty.