By Wendy Gragg

Tribune-Herald staff writer

The official verdict isn’t in yet, but Waco Independent School District officials see improvement in the preliminary state test scores of the district’s most at-risk school, G.L. Wiley Middle School, and at several other campuses across the district.

The district reported Friday that reviews of preliminary results of the 2008 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests indicate as many as nine Waco ISD schools may garner the “recognized” state rating. Final scores and official state ratings — of exemplary, recognized, acceptable and unacceptable — will be released in the fall.

A statement from the district said that a greater number of students passed the reading, science and social studies sections of the exams. Though scores at individual campuses are not yet being released, district officials indicated that test score gains were also seen at G. L. Wiley.

Last year, 1 percentage point kept G.L. Wiley in the unacceptable category for its fourth consecutive year. Wiley has been under the threat of closure but received a reprieve last year from Texas commissioner of education Robert Scott.

Marsha Ridlehuber, WISD assistant superintendent of accountability and instruction, said the broad picture she has so far shows a second year of gains in reading, math and social studies at Wiley.

“I’m so excited about the progress they made for the second year in a row,” Ridlehuber said. “Really neat things are going on over there. I don’t want to lose sight of that in all this.”

Ridlehuber singled out some positive trends across the district:

* Reading scores are up after hitting a plateau in recent years.

* Social studies scores are up after a drop last year.

* The emphasis that the district has put on getting students into science labs in earlier grades showed up this year in the improved scores of high school sophomores and juniors.

Preliminary results for individual campuses will be released later in the summer. It’s taking the district longer to release preliminary scores this year due to different reporting from the state, Ridlehuber said.

This was the first year for students with special needs to take the TAKS Accommodated, or TAKS A, test. The state reported the TAKS scores to districts with TAKS A scores figured in, but TAKS A scores are not ultimately figured into district and school accountability ratings. So district administrators have been tabulating scores for grades, subjects and schools themselves.

“It is more work on us to try to crunch the numbers and get some idea where each campus is,” Ridlehuber said.

District officials are eager to see how Wiley students did this year. Ridlehuber said they are going over every piece of data they have and being very cautious as they work up the school’s scores. Wiley is such a small school, with just over 200 students, that even a single student’s score can make a difference in the averages, Ridlehuber said.

Waco ISD is likely to get some word from the state about the tentative fate of Wiley before the official ratings are released in August, said DeEtta Culbertson, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

Culbertson said the commissioner of education plans to take a look at the TAKS scores of the schools across the state that are on the list for possible closure. The commissioner should be able to let those districts know what may happen to those schools in the fall.

“Hopefully we’ll have something here in the next few weeks,” Culbertson said.

Also rated “unacceptable” last year were Doris Miller and Brook Avenue elementary schools. Ridlehuber said she wouldn’t hazard a guess as to which schools, if any, might fall in the “academically unacceptable” category this year.

wgragg@wacotrib.com

757-6901

—— PRELIMINARY TAKS SCORES FOR WACO ISD ——

Percentage of students passing, according to figures released by Waco ISD

All students Black Hispanic White Econ. disadvantaged

Subject Tested ’07 ’08 ’07 ’08 ’07 ’08 ’07 ’08 ’07 ’08

Reading/English/

Language Arts 82 84.8 77 79.8 82 85.5 92 94.3 80 83.5

Mathematics 66 66.9 58 58.0 67 69.2 82 79.9 65 64.8

Writing 90 90.1 85 89.2 92 89.8 95 93.9 90 89.3

Science 55 60.7 45 49.6 54 62.5 80 83.7 52 57.3

Social Studies 83 88.7 79 83.7 83 90.3 92 94.6 82 87.1

Source: Waco ISD