The Washington State Board of Education voted to release the Renton School District from its list of districts with failing schools in the state on May 14.

Back in March, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn recommended that because of Lakeridge Elementary, the district should exit out of the Required Action status because of dramatically improved student test scores in math and reading. Required Action Districts are those that receive money and assistance to help schools improve.

Lakeridge was identified in 2011, based on a three-year trend in the previous years of low performance, with the School Improvement Grant (SIG) Designation. At that time, the school was among the lowest 5 percent for performance of state schools.

The Renton School District was recommended to leave the program because school officials successfully implemented a required action plan for three years, made sufficient progress that the district no longer has a school on the “Priority School” list and made progress closing the educational opportunity gap.

The Morton School District and the Onalaska School District joined Renton in the list of districts that were to be released from Required Action Status in an announcement from the State Board of Education on May 26.

According to Board Chair Isabel Muñoz-Colón, “These schools received extra support from the state to close gaps in serving their students and have made remarkable progress.”

At Lakeridge, all students’ proficiency on state assessments in reading and math combined and increased by over 30 percentage points  ̶  to surpass the Washington state average, according to the press release. Students at Lakeridge were also said to have “displayed higher than average growth in reading and excellent growth in math.”