Large numbers of students in the Nogales Unified School District No. 1 (NUSD) met the bar or surpassed it when they took the state AIMS tests this spring. NUSD students raised their scores in 17 of 21 areas, compared with 2008, said Superintendent Shawn McCollough. “You just don't see that type of improvement in one year,” McCollough said. “It's incredible.”

AIMS, which is the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards, measures progress in reading, math and writing for students in third through 8th grades and 10th grade. It sets a passing score for each test and puts the results into these categories: falls far below, approaches, meets and exceeds. Tom Horne, state superintendent of public instruction, announced July 15 that AIMS scores had improved statewide in all areas. At NUSD, the most dramatic gains were in 7th grade math and 5th grade reading, where 13 percent more students passed or exceeded the standard, according to an NUSD graph. Ten percent more of the fourth-graders reached that level in reading this year. But the percentage of 8th and 10th graders who passed the math section dropped a point. McCollough attributed the gains to a policy of “high expectations, accountability, and no excuses.” “All staff members should take pride in this accomplishment �“ teachers, custodians, bus drivers,” McCollough said. “Everyone contributed by increasing our accountability and putting kids first.” The results were for all students in each grade level, including English Language Learners and special education students, said Angelina Canto, school improvement director. “I thought the results were very strong and represent a lot of hard work done this past year,” she said. The percentage of students who met or exceeded the standard in writing dipped slightly in third and 10th grades, according to the graph. Although the state hasn’t changed the writing test, “the prompts vary,” Canto said. A prompt is the topic given to a student, who must write a one to two-page essay, she said. The scorer looks for “organization of ideas, sentence fluency and the writer’s voice coming through,” Canto said. For high school students, AIMS testing began in late February, but most students took the three-part test in April, Canto said. The district received the results in early June, but the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) does not allow them to be released until July 15. “They give us time to make any corrections,” such as a child being misclassified, she said. At the end of July, ADE will deliver another set of data to the school districts �“ the designations for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Canto said. AYP means that students are advancing toward a goal set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Each year, a larger percentage of students must pass their state’s standardized test until all students are passing by 2014. McCollough hopes to make a presentation on the AIMS scores to the NUSD governing board during the week of July 27, he said.