The school was listed as a “Tier 1” school in a release issued by the California Department of Education. To make the list, schools were found to be in the lowest 5 percent of persistently poor-achieving schools.
The list and its release are part of the state’s efforts to grab some of the federal government’s Race to the Top funding that will draw on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and School Improvement Grant monies.
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The Turnaround Model mandates major school improvements including replacing the principal and firing at least half of the school’s staff. The Restart Model requires closing and reopening as a charter school. The School Closure model mandates closing and sending students to other schools in the district. The Transformation Model requires a new principal and increased instructional time.
The La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District school is the only school in San Mateo County on the list.
LHPUSD Superintendent Dennis Dobbs mentioned efforts to obtain Race to the Top funds in his state of the district letter in January. The letter also acknowledges the district’s prolonged problems reaching acceptable scores on standardized tests:
“For far too long, standardized test scores have shown the need for improving the academic performance of our students,” Dobbs wrote. “There is a wide achievement gap in performance of various sub-groups of the student populations and the overall levels of performance are not what they should be. The school staffs are reviewing instructional practices and materials to target reforms that will significantly raise student achievement levels.
“The first steps have been to acknowledge that we are not achieving the necessary learning results for students, which in turn, fosters a sense of urgency to do better,” he wrote.
Dobbs could not be reached on Tuesday.
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