Dear Editor,
As the new principal of Brownell Middle School I want to commend
you for your editorial headlined, Middle School AYP Madness
(9/7).
Dear Editor,
As the new principal of Brownell Middle School I want to commend you for your editorial headlined, Middle School AYP Madness (9/7). You were right on target with your assertion that “a crucial element of any school’s success is strong leadership from the principal”. There is a great body of literature that substantiates your claim and in my almost 20 year career as a principal I know it is true. I also want to congratulate our sister school, Solorsano, and the principal Sal Tomasello, for making all API and AYP
targets.
Briefly let me get back to the madness you mentioned. The facts reflect that Brownell faculty and students did very good work together last year. Brownell met ALL Academic Performance Index targets and the API went up 25 points to 729 in 2006. We aspire to reach the state target of 800 in a few years with excellent instruction, teamwork, continuous improvement models, and high expectations for all learners.
The Adequate Yearly Progress indicators were all met in 2006 with one exception that continues to keep us in Program Improvement. The only area in which Brownell missed the target was in the sub group of English Language Learners. To meet the target we needed a little less than 26 percent of our English Language Learners to score proficient or advanced on the California Standards Test in English-Language Arts and Math. Approximately 22 percent scored proficient or advanced therefore missing our target by only 6 students. The madness is for us not to recognize the improvement that was made and only focus on the issue of program improvement.
We know we must be vigilant relative to targeting increased achievement for all students. We endeavor to kick it up a notch while trying to meet all our target goals this year. Please let’s all remember that meeting all but one target shows considerable improvement from the previous years. Although we still have work to do the Brownell faculty deserves recognition on meeting all but one AYP target.
Joe DiSalvo, Gilroy
