Canyon Springs Elementary School has announced significant improvement in student scores under the No Child Left Behind program and celebrated the achievement during the Sulphur Springs Union School District governing board meeting Wednesday night on the Canyon Springs campus.

The school was put in program improvement after not meeting targets in English Language Arts and math in 2009.

When a school is in program improvement, students, staff, parents and administrators work especially hard together to improve student achievement.

For a school to exit Program Improvement, the students need to achieve the assessment targets for two consecutive years. Canyon Springs administration and staff continued to work with parents to provide an instructional program that better met the needs of their diverse students and in 2011 reached those targets for the first year.

They unfortunately did not meet the targets in 2012 and began the process to move out of Program Improvement again. Working together as a team – parents, students, staff and administration- they supported students who met the targets in 2013.

Excited that students were achieving parents continued to partner with the school by participating in parent conferences and evening parent workshops to learn ways they could support their children at home. In 2013 and again in 2015 Canyon Springs students met the required targets and have now worked their way out of program improvement.

No Child Left Behind public schools are required to meet set targets of students achieving Proficient and Advanced in English Language Arts and mathematics on the California Standards Test.

Schools are required to reach these targets in both subject areas, English Language Arts and math, school wide, as well as for significant student subgroups. Examples of subgroups include English learners, students with disabilities, White, African American, Asian, socioeconomically disadvantaged, Filipino, Hispanic, etc. A subgroup becomes significant when there are 100 or more students counted in that subgroup.