Malibu High’s Distinguished School Status Is Withdrawn

• Data Computation Error Is Cause

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

In April, the California Department of Education announced that Malibu High School had been designated a California Distinguished School for 2009. The school has subsequently been withdrawn from the list by the CDE as the result of a “technical change” in MHS’s data that affected the school’s initial eligibility as a candidate, according to MHS principal Mark Kelly.
“After carefully assessing our data, reviewing our case with district staff, and consulting with the CDE, we have accepted the change in an open letter to the school community. “We do so in fairness to all schools that met the initial eligibility criteria. While our status may have changed, the core commitment of ensuring a high quality education to our students has not changed.”
In order to be eligible for an invitation to apply for the award, MHS had to to meet a number of federal and state criteria, including the No Child Left Behind program, Academic Performance Index (API), and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which includes achieving certain “academic achievement benchmarks” for all “numerically significant subgroups within the school.” The application was followed by extensive screening and a review process that included a site visit” designed to validate the full implementation of the submitted practices.
According to Kelly, “When the state first posted the 2008 achievement results for SMMUSD in August, it was noted that the students with disabilities subgroup was not accurate. Students were correctly as members of this group and were largely undercounted. SMMUSD submitted data corrections to CDE in October and in February; the corrections were finalized and submitted to the CDE on March 10. On April 29, the CDE reposted achievement data for SMMUSD schools,” Kelly wrote.
“It was at this time that we learned that Malibu High did not meet its Academic Performance Index (API) growth target in the students with disabilities sub-group, which schools must do to be eligible as a Distinguished School candidate. This information was not known at the time the CDE invited schools to apply. We entered the process believing we met all eligibility requirements and engaged in it in good faith. The process included approval of our application and a comprehensive site visit that yielded substantial praise from the visiting team of educational leaders,” Kelly stated.
Kelly pointed out that, while the school did not receive its CDS designation, it did post achievement gains in all areas. “Schoolwide, we posted an eight-point gain in our API, an eight-point gain in our white subgroup and a one-point gain in our students with disabilities subgroup.”
In order to qualify for the award, MHS would have needed to demonstrate a 12-point achievement gain for the disabilities subgroup. Students with disabilities at the Malibu campus, as well as their families and teachers, receive extra support from the Malibu Special Education Foundation, a non-profit started in 2002 to fund programs for children with disabilities, according the organization’s website. However the district’s special education program has been under fire from parents for several years, and is currently facing a $700,000 budget cut for the 2009-10 year.
According to the CDE, the schools awarded the CDS represent about 10.9 percent of California’s 2400 middle and high schools. Only 341 schools met the eligibility criteria based on their student achievement. Schools keep their CDS certification for four years. The program alternates between upper and lower schools; elementary schools that meet the program’s criteria will receive the award in 2010.