Report to analyze student assessments in school discipline programs

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department is compiling a report on how students in Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs (JJAEPs) performed on the TAKS test, and though data hasn't been released yet, they leaked a bit of good news to the juvie probation department in Wichita Falls ("JJAEP students pass '11 reading TAKS," April 10):

Linda Brooke of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in Austin was preparing a report on the TAKS pass rates of students in the state's juvenile education program when she ran across something so surprising that she couldn't keep it to herself.

She emailed Kirk Wolfe, Wichita County's Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program director, to congratulate him on his high-performing JJAEP.

According to her data, 100 percent of students in the Wichita County JJAEP program passed the reading TAKS test in 2011.

"Since we have been looking at this passage rate, nobody has ever achieved a 100 percent passage rate," she wrote to Wolfe in an email Tuesday. "The average for JJAEPs in the area is 68.8 percent."

She told Wolfe that the accomplishment was "outstanding" and wrote, "Just wanted to tell you what a great job you and your staff are doing."

The full 2012 report, called The Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Performance Assessment Report, is due out May 1.

Kudos to Wolfe, his team and his students on the accomplishment. Here are a few more preliminary data:

Social studies had the highest pass rate among all discipline students statewide, with 80 percent meeting the state's standard, according to Texas Education Agency data on 2011 statewide TAKS test results of discipline students, published Oct. 27.

Pass rates decreased from there: Writing, 75.8 percent; reading, 67.7 percent; science, 54.4 percent; math, 46.1 percent.

Not all of the 55,952 disciplinary students took all tests. In social studies, 36.9 percent were tested; in writing, 13.2 percent; in reading, 84.7 percent; in science 39.3 percent; in math, 81.8 percent.

The TEA information did not break down the data into counties or school districts. That will come in the May 1 report.

I'm not sure I understand why not all disciplinary students were tested. According to the Texas Education Agency, "students who have been removed from their current placements for disciplinary reasons (i.e. suspended, expelled, or otherwise assigned to an IAES or other setting) must participate in all general state and district-wide assessments." For more information and data on assessment of disciplinary students, see this link-filled page on the TEA website.