All Lake Oswego public schools received one of the top two performance ratings under a new school accountability system provided for by a recent waiver of Oregon’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind.

Last month, Oregon became the 32nd state to be granted flexibility from specific mandates of No Child Left Behind by the U.S. Department of Education in exchange for transitioning students, teachers and schools to a system aligned with college- and career-ready standards for all students, developing differentiated accountability systems and undertaking reforms to support effective classroom instruction and school leadership.

Under Oregon’s new system, schools are evaluated on criteria including academic achievement, academic growth and graduation rates, with additional ratings based on the same criteria for subgroups such as special education students, English language learners and all students who are American Indian/Alaska Native, black, Hispanic or Pacific Islander. These scores are then weighted to produce an overall rating on a scale of 1 through 5.

Bryant, Hallinan, Lake Grove, River Grove and Westridge elementary schools, Lake Oswego and Waluga junior high schools and Lake Oswego and Lakeridge high schools each received an overall rating of 4. Forest Hills, Oak Creek and Uplands elementary schools received overall ratings of 5.

As of this school year Uplands has been closed and Bryant has been reconfigured as part of Lakeridge Junior High, formerly Waluga.

“We are very pleased with the performance ratings that our schools have received,” said LOSD Superintendent Bill Korach. “Every single one of our schools is rated in the top tiers.”

“The work that we need to do now,” he said, “is to look at those kids in those subgroup areas that we’re not getting as much improvement from as we would like, and then go to work on that.”

“We really do have to zero in on the subgroups and work to get an improvement level for the subgroups that have been identified,” Korach added. “That’ll be some of the things that I’ll be working with our administrators on in August.”

Adhering to the ESEA flexibility guidelines, Oregon’s new rating system also ranks the success of Title I high-poverty schools. The bottom 5 percent of schools receive a “Priority” designation. The 17 schools currently receiving ESEA school improvement grants, which are awarded to school districts with one or more persistently lowest achieving schools in the state, are also designated as Priority.

The bottom 15 percent of Title I high schools are designated as “Focus” schools, signaling that future interventions should be closely targeted to subgroup needs rather than whole school reform.

Taking cues from Colorado’s rating system, the top 5 percent of Title I schools in Oregon are designated as “Model” schools that will help share best practices and guide other schools toward better student outcomes in the future.

River Grove Elementary is the only Title I school in Lake Oswego. Because it received an overall rating of 4, it did not qualify for a Model school designation.

“This new system dings you if you don’t have improvement to go along with your high performance scores,” said Korach. “And so a school that has more room for improvement has an advantage in this kind of scoring system.”

Riverdale Grade School received an overall rating of 3, while Riverdale High School received a 5. Westside Christian and Park Academy were not rated because private schools don’t have to meet the same requirements.