School districts by the numbers

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Area schools have received their report cards, and the results showed how are students are doing in math, reading, science and writing.

But the report cards contain more information than how the students are progressing academically. The 2008 Illinois School Report Cards provide information on student demographics and financial information.

School report cards show the results of how students are performing on standardized tests, but they don’t take into account how students differ from each other. Some students enter kindergarten with two years of preschool under their belts, while other students will struggle with identifying their ABCs.

Some students will show the advantages of having been enriched with a variety of cultural experiences, while others will come from homes in which English is rarely spoken.

Some students come from families in which they want for nothing, while others might know what it means to go to bed hungry.

How does your school district measure up?

Low-income

According to the Illinois School Report Card, low-income students come from families receiving public aid; live in institutions for neglected or delinquent children; are supported in foster homes with public funds; or are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches.

In Bureau County, the highest number of students who meet that mark are at Leepertown Elementary in Bureau, where 86.5 percent, or about 45 of the 52 students in the district, qualify.

Leepertown is joined by DePue at 68 percent, Spring Valley at 51 percent, and Neponset at 50 percent on the list of schools with a higher percentage of low-come students than the statewide average of 41.1 percent.

According to the numbers, the fewest low-income students are in the Ohio High School District, but high schools figures are often less accurate than those at the grade schools. Many high school students are embarrassed to admit they qualify for a free or reduced lunch, so they don’t fill out the necessary paperwork.

Limited English

Again according to the report card, Limited-English-proficient students are those students eligible for transitional bilingual programs.

In Bureau County, DePue takes the top score, with 24.7, or almost one student out of every four, eligible for the programs.

Princeton High School ties the state average with 7.5 of the students qualifying for the programs, followed by Hall with 5.9 percent, Spring Valley Elementary with 3.4 percent, and a scant 0.2 percent of students in the Bureau Valley District.

Chronic truancy and attendance

A child’s family income or ability in English doesn’t matter much if the child isn’t in the classroom. Chronic truants are those students who are absent from school without valid cause for 18 or more of the last 180 school days.

More than 11 percent of Ohio High School’s 55 students were identified as chronic truants, followed by 9.3 percent of Leepertown’s students and 6 percent of the Ohio Elementary District’s 88 students. Several Bureau County Schools hovered around the state average of 2.5 percent, while five districts had no truant students at all.

However, overall attendance at all Bureau County school districts is higher than the 92 percent mark. According to the figures, only Princeton High School, with 92.8 percent, is lower than the state average of 93.3 percent. Hall High School leads the pack with an attendance score of 99.5 percent.

Mobility

A district’s mobility rate is based on the number of times students enroll in or leave a school during the school year. Students who move from one school to another are often held back by having to get used to a new district.

In Bureau County, the highest mobility rate is at Leepertown, where almost half of the students have moved during the past school year. Other local schools with rates higher than the state average of 14.9 percent are Spring Valley Elementary with 22.4 percent, Neponset with 18.8 percent, and DePue with 17.8 percent.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a multi-part series on the Illinois Report Card.

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