By Wendy Gragg

Tribune-Herald staff writer

G.L. Wiley Middle School has been rated “academically unacceptable” by the Texas Education Agency for a fifth straight year. Unlike other schools in the same position, though, Wiley’s doors won’t be closing next year.

Waco Independent School District announced Thursday that Robert Scott, the state commissioner of education, has decided to place Wiley under alternative management, but he is going to postpone that change for one year.

“Given the high levels of performance achieved by students across most subject areas, and given the focused nature of the needed improvement, I am waiving alternative management because I believe, with one more year of effort, the campus will raise its rating,” Scott said in a letter to the district.

Alternative management would consist of a nonprofit entity or another district contracting with Waco ISD to run Wiley. Waco ISD would have to pay a fee for this service, said TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson.

“I’m appreciative to Commissioner Scott for recognizing the improvements the school has made,” said WISD superintendent Roland Hernandez.

School board trustee Sammy Smith was deeply discouraged by the news of Wiley’s fifth “unacceptable” rating.

“I think it’s a sad commentary for Waco ISD,” Smith said. Smith compared Wiley with the multiple other middle schools that achieve “acceptable” status while having a larger teacher-to-student ratio than Wiley.

This is the second reprieve Wiley has gotten from the state. Last year, Wiley was under threat of closure for its history of low performance, but former education commissioner Shirley Neeley said she was not going to close any schools at the time. When Scott took Neely’s position, he honored her promise to those schools. In 2006, Wiley underwent an extreme staff overhaul after a state-mandated intervention team recommended that nearly the entire Wiley staff reapply for their jobs

Two of the four Texas schools in the same boat as Wiley, with four consecutive years as “unacceptable,” did not fare as well. The state is shutting down Johnston High School in Austin and Sam Houston High School in Houston, officials announced recently.

Wiley has one more year to get its state test scores up to standard. The school was held back by a single subject area — science. Wiley principal Kermit Ward said he knew science was a tough area for his students, but he was shocked to learn that the science scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test were low enough to keep his school in the “unacceptable” category. Ward said he and his staff had aspirations of cruising past the “acceptable” rating to the second-highest label, “recognized.”

Though Wiley students showed gains for a second year in math and reading test scores, Ward said only 34 percent of students passed the science TAKS test.

“That is so alarming and so inconsistent with everything else at the school,” Ward said. “There was no indication all year long that we were in that much trouble.”

Ward said students didn’t perform as poorly on the benchmark tests, which they take throughout the year to measure how they’re doing.

Ward said Thursday that he’s already planning how the school will turn its science scores around next year. He’s said he’s also glad to see that Scott believes the school can finally meet its goal next year.

“What he sees is a school that’s on the rise, on the move,” Ward said. “The driving fact in his decision had to be where we finished in all the other categories.”

Ward said he is excited because next year Wiley has a new, veteran science teacher coming in. Ward feels so confident in his students’ abilities in other subjects that science may become the focus next year at Wiley. Hernandez agreed, saying you can never put too much emphasis on a subject.

Ward will be talking to his faculty about the challenges ahead when they meet for a teacher summer retreat in July. He said he and his staff and students will go into the next year optimistically, despite the low performance label that hangs over their heads.

“You point to the positives, and the positive is we really almost nailed it,” he said.

wgragg@wacotrib.com

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