Tombstone High School received a D in accordance to the state’s new letter grading system for school success.

For those in Tombstone Unified School District, the tests don’t tell the full story. But with the new letter grading system prime to supplant the current standard by 2013 and Tombstone’s children still struggling to keep up with ever increasing AIMS test goals, educators are trying to balance making sure government’s happy and kids are learning.

In Tombstone Unified School District, Tombstone High School made some progress with its AIMS, Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards, scores but not enough to make its adequate yearly progress goal. AYP is a federal mandate levied through the No Child Left Behind Act that measures school improvement, in part based on AIMS. 

Tombstone High School Principal Robert Devere said he rates student success based on their preparedness outside of school rather than just the AIMS test.

Devere said the addition of a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) class as well as an academic decathlon class were meant to serve student needs past what’s needed to make AIMS progress.

“We’re not doing it for AIMS, we’re doing it because it is good for kids,” Devere said. “What good is it to have all your kids passing the AIMS if they leave school and can’t function in society?”

Those scores, he said, don’t accurately show what’s happening in the schools, a marker that Tombstone Unified School District Superintendent Karl Uterhardt agreed with.

“It’s an end-all be-all test and you are not measuring overall knowledge,” Uterhardt said, adding that many kids go the military route, or right into the workforce and that although some of the math skills are useful, they aren’t directly applicable for the kinds of things that Tombstone kids are going into.

Uterhardt also said he thinks there was some underreporting in SAIS, the state Student Accountability Information System tool that records amounts of students in schools, that skewed his results even more. The system is currently undergoing modifications.

“We get what we get, but I at least want the reporting to be accurate,” he said. “I can handle whatever score but I want all my kids to be counted.”

The AZ LEARNS system, which rates schools on different levels from underperforming to failing, rated Tombstone High School as a “performing” school. But new state rankings that rank schools on a letter-grade system gave the school a D.

The letter-grade system will replace AZ LEARNS in 2013. Under the new system, a school will only be designated as failing if it earns an underperforming designation for three years in a row. Less than 300 of around 1,550 school across the state earned an A grade. Half the schools in the state came out with either a B or a C.

Graduation and dropout rates, and the performance of English-language learners constitute the major differences between the two systems, though both still rely on AIMS for scoring.

At Tombstone High School, 44 percent of students passed the AIMS in math, 75 percent passed reading, 68 percent passed writing and 36 percent passed science this year. In 2010, 42 percent passed math, 72 percent reading, 68 percent writing and 33 percent science.

The test, administered every year, is required to graduate from an Arizona high school, with rare exception. The more stringent math test introduced last year still had less students pass than in 2009 and changes to the writing test, which added multiple-choice questions to what used to be just an essay test, lowered scores in that area. A new batch of Tombstone High students will get their crack at the AIMS at the end of this month.  

But for struggling schools, it will become harder to graduate their students — the Arizona Board of Education's requirements for math to graduate from high school increased. Students in the class of 2013 now need to take four years worth of math classes to graduate.

But this isn't the only challenge schools will face. A new national proficiency exam might supplant AIMS as early as 2015, making each of these areas of struggle even more evident, as Arizona students will be pitted against peers from across the nation aligning with a new common course standards formula to measure student progress.

Those rumors run around every couple of years, according to Devere, and making a new end-all, be-all test is “just another flavor of the same popsicle.”

“Even though budgets are being cut,” Devere said, “ we are doing our best, we are adding to our programs — and we’re doing it because it’s best for the kids.”

Tombstone Unified School District Education Breakdown

Tombstone High School

Achievement profile 2011: Performing

Achievement profile 2010: Performing

Letter grade: D

AIMS passage in 2011: Math – 44 percent, writing – 75 percent, reading – 68 percent, science – 36 percent

AIMS passage in 2010: Math – 42 percent, writing – 68 percent, reading – 72 percent, science – 33 percent

Huachuca City School

Achievement profile 2011: Performing plus

Achievement profile 2010: Performing plus

Letter grade: C

AIMS passage in 2011: Math – 51 percent, writing – 80 percent, reading – 49 percent, science – 59 percent

AIMS passage in 2010: Math – 46 percent passage, writing – 76 percent, reading – 72 percent, science – 44 percent

Walter J. Meyer School

Achievement profile 2011: Performing

Achievement profile 2010: Performing plus

Letter grade: N/A

AIMS passage in 2011: Math – 76 percent, writing – 88 percent

AIMS passage in 2010: Math – 48 percent, writing – 80 percent