Chinook Middle in SeaTac is the only Puget Sound area school to reach step five in federal sanctions as a result of test scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).

Step five means the Highline District school has missed federal No Child Left Behind Act targets for the past six years.

According to the regulations, the school must restructure according to a plan drawn up last year.

In addition, it must offer students a chance to transfer to a higher-scoring school, and offer private tutoring to low-income students.

The plan could also include replacing the principal and other staffers.

Before the test scores were released, however, Chinook principal Todd Moorhead had been reassigned as assistant principal at the Puget Sound Skills Center.

Evie Livingston, formerly with the Seattle School District, is the new principal.

For a school to make adequate yearly progress as mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, every one of nine demographic sub-groups, or "cells," must meet the state target.

A certain percentage of students in the cell must pass the WASL; the percentage varies by grade level.)

Cells used to judge adequate yearly progress are Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic, White, English Language Learner (ELL), special education, and low income.

If any one cell does not meet standard, the school does not make adequate yearly progress.

At Chinook, 27.3 percent of targets were missed.

Two other Highline middle schools, Cascade in North Highline and Pacific in Des Moines, were placed at step four, having missed one of more targets for at least five years.

They must offer transfers to other schools and outside tutoring to low-income students as well as devise plans to restructure the schools.

Cascade missed 34.8 percent of targets, while Pacific missed 27.3 percent.

Three elementaries are in step two because they missed one or more targets for at least three years.

Beverly Park at Glendale in North Highline, Hazel Valley in Burien and Madrona in SeaTac must allow students to transfer and offer tutoring.

Evergreen High in North Highline, Highline High in Burien and Showalter Middle in the Tukwila School District also missed the federal targets for at least three years.

However, they escaped sanctions because the district does not receive federal Title I funds for those schools.

Tukwila's Foster High also escaped sanctions for the same reason, although it missed the targets for at least two years.

Highline district officials were also informed that the Tyee High campus in SeaTac did not make sufficient progress.

But because Tyee has been split into three separate learning communities, district staffers believe the process for evaluating adequate yearly progress should start over and be applied separately to each school, according to spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers.

She said district and state officials are working out Tyee's status. None of the Tyee schools use Title I funds so they would not face sanctions.

Overall the Highline and Tukwila districts were placed on the federal “needs improvement” list for not making adequate yearly progress.

This is Tukwila's first year on the list. Seattle, Marysville and Renton are other Puget Sound districts that did not meet the federal standards.

Rogers noted one school that made notable improvement is Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines, which made adequate yearly progress for the second consecutive year, thus shedding the "needs improvement" label under the federal mandate.

It had failed to make adequate yearly progress previously due to low scores in one cell.

The Highline School Board will hold a work-study session on the WASL/adequate yearly progress results and discuss next steps on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at district headquarters.

The starting time for this discussion has not been set but will either precede or follow the regular board meeting at 6 p.m. The session is open to the public.

All Highline schools met the state target for WASL passage in reading and three-quarters met the target in math.

In all schools that did not meet this goal, a majority of students did pass the reading WASL, but a lower percentage of students in one, two, or three of the nine sub-groups passed.

Rogers said district staff will not be fully satisfied until all students are achieving at grade level or better, but that large test score improvements from year to year should be taken into account when deciding sanctions.

"One school could make a giant leap and still not made adequate yearly progress while another school could go down and not be on the [adequate yearly progress] list," Rogers added. "Some schools have farther to go.

"It is not an excuse to slow down but when the principal, teachers and students are working hard that should be recognized."