Education Law

More schools expected to land on AYP watch list

BoardBuzz couldn?t agree more with this editorial from the Star Tribune that NCLB?s accountability system is wrongly ensnaring more and more schools.

The latest NCLB results showed that almost half of Minnesota?s 1,900 public schools failed to make adequate yearly progress or AYP, compared with 729 last year and 247 in 2005. The editorial rightly pointed out that schools and communities must do more to help struggling students, but the law?s flawed accountability framework has much to do with the growing number of schools landing on the watch list. That?s because NCLB relies too heavily on scores from a single standardized test in reading and math to judge overall school performance. What's more, the law's proficiency target keeps rising and the gains in test scores were not sufficient to meet this year?s benchmark in Minnesota.

Minnesota is not alone in the challenge of meeting a moving target. Many states are seeing significant increases in their NCLB targets this year, meaning more students will have to meet the NCLB definition of proficient in reading and math for their schools to make AYP. See here for more.

In Minnesota, perhaps the most notable impact of the latest AYP results is on the state?s suburban schools, most of which had been able to avoid the AYP watch list. As one Minnesota administrator put it in this news report:
?Suburbs have been able to dodge the bullet a bit longer than urban schools because they are both less diverse and have fewer of the high risk students. As a group that was probably next in line to be flagged, it was probably suburban schools.?

This year's AYP results around the country should send a clear message to Congress: Fix the law or prepare to explain to its constituents why so many of their local schools are deemed failing. See here for NSBA's recommendations for fixing NCLB.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on August 15, 2008 (boomark / email).