Parents of Irving School students will have the option to move their children to Bradley School this year as the Board of Education tries to improve test scores at Irving.
The Board of Education voted 8 – 0 Wednesday to approve a “school choice plan” for Irving School students.
Superintendent Stephen Tracy said the district is required by the federal No Child Left Behind law to offer the option because Irving School failed to make adequate yearly progress for two years on Connecticut Mastery Tests for reading and math proficiency.
Irving had to reach a threshold of 82 percent of students being proficient in math and 79 percent proficiency in reading.
Schools that don’t make adequate progress in consecutive years are designated as needing improvement and have to prepare and implement plans to reach those benchmarks.
Tracy said Bradley School, which houses students from kindergarten through sixth grade, will only have 19 slots in certain grade levels to accept transfers.
Priority will be given to children in low-income families as defined by the district’s free and reduced lunch program and to students that performed poorly on the state exams last year.
The transfer application deadline is Sept. 18.
Parents will be notified of whether their child can transfer a week later. Tracy said the earliest any Irving student could transfer to Bradley School is Oct. 5.
Tracy and Irving Principal Fran Gallo will also work on a plan to improve the school’s proficiency rate, which will be presented in October to the Board of Education for approval.
Changes to improve reading scores were already planned before the state notification, such as the addition of a third reading teacher, implementation of a response to intervention program to assess student reading more frequently and making more time for reading during the school day.
Gallo said any school that fails to meet the proficiency standards “feels pressure,” but he’s aware of the tasks and will create a plan to make sure kids are showing improvement.
“We need to find out early if what we’re doing is working,” Gallo said.
Tracy said the results underscore the fact that improvements need to be made throughout the district to make sure children are engaged in learning and teachers are efficient in passing along the lessons.
“There is a difference between what they are capable of and what they’re doing,” he said. The state test results “show that we have a lot of kids that can do better.”
Bradley School, Derby Middle School and Derby High School made adequate yearly progress on state tests in the 2008-09 school year after failing to do so in the 2007-08 academic year, Tracy said.
Official test results from the state Department of Education will not be available until Monday.
Board member Rebecca O’Hara, who is president of the Irving School Parent-Teacher Organization, left Tuesday’s meeting early and did not vote on the plan.
She had no comment before the meeting on the plan because she had not had a chance to review it.
