a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
In my article on the different forms of accountability, I mentioned briefly the new federal legislation, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which has as its centerpiece the accountability provision of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In the last few months, the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) composed and submitted the state’s plan for AYP to the U.S. Department of Education. The plan was approved, after some negotiation; the U.S. Department required us to rewrite it so that it strictly follows “the letter of the law.” As one looks at the details of this plan based on the 1200-page NCLB law, one can see that NCLB is draconian and unrealistic, despite its lofty and desirable goal of leaving no child in America’s public schools behind.
The AYP plan is required to consist of three components: improved proficiency, participation in testing, and another indicator. Barely any discretion is given to the state to determine how these components would look. As I mentioned in the September 2002 issue, NCLB requires that all students reach proficiency on state standards-based tests by the 2013-2014 school year. Colorado is fortunate to have already implemented standards-based testing through CSAP. NCLB mandates testing in Reading and Math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school; furthermore, it mandates testing in Science at least once in elementary, middle, and high school. Colorado only has to add Math CSAPs in grades 3 and 4 and Science CSAPs in elementary and high school; NCLB gives us until the 2005-2006 school year to do so. This particular provision of NCLB is not difficult for us, although it is overwhelming for several other states.
NCLB requires three levels of proficiency on the state’s standards-based tests: basic, proficient, and advanced. Since Colorado has measured CSAP at four levels of proficiency (unsatisfactory, partially proficient, proficient, and advanced), we had to determine which two we would combine to comply with the federal requirement. After much discussion with many representatives from the education community in Colorado, we determined that we would merge “partially proficient” and “proficient” for the purposes of determining AYP. (However, the regular yearly reporting of CSAP results will still include all four categories.) Since our state’s “bar” for proficiency is set high in comparison with other states, this decision was acceptable to the federal reviewers.
The place where NCLB becomes draconian is in the setting of “targets” for AYP. The first target is to bring all disaggregated subgroups up to the state’s baseline level of proficiency within two years. (I will use the figures for elementary reading in order to explain the situation; similar figures were determined for reading at the middle and high school levels and for math at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.) The subgroups that Colorado must disaggregate are as follows: white, black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander, economically disadvantaged (based on free and reduced lunch qualification), and students with disabilities (i.e., special education students on IEPs). The statewide baseline (determined by a complex calculation that can be considered the statewide average of students who scored “proficient” by the federal definition) – and this includes only students who were continuously enrolled for one year – is 77.5%. These are the baseline levels of proficiency for each of the subgroups:
Thus, in order for any school, any school district, or the state to make AYP by 2003-2004, every one of its subgroups must have 77.5% of its students scoring proficient. (However, in order for a school or district to disaggregate a subgroup, there must be at least 30 students in that category.) For white, Native American, and Asian students, this is not a concern (unless their achievement drops severely). But for special education students, it is unrealistically difficult – they would have to show a 26.5% increase in two years! The targets for LEP, black, and Hispanic students are not really any more realistic to accomplish in two years.
Fortunately, there is a provision of NCLB to make AYP more attainable. It is called the “Safe Harbor” provision. It says that if the school, district, or state – or any of its subgroups – decreases the amount of non-proficient students by 10% or more in a year, then AYP is considered to have been reached. So the question is whether the state can decrease the number of non-proficient black students by 2.4%, Hispanic by 2.9%, and so on, in two years.
After two years to come up to baseline or make Safe Harbor, the state as a whole, every subgroup within it, and every school and district and every subgroup within them must move their proficiency percentage up to new targeted levels, making steady increase leading to 100% of all students being proficient in 2013-14. Even if we believe that it’s possible for all white, black, Hispanic, and other racial/ethnic students to become proficient, is it believable that all special education students can be? Or that all English language learners can be?
As if the above-mentioned AYP requirements were not challenging enough, there are still two other components. One is participation in testing. NCLB mandates that 95% of all students continuously enrolled in the school/district/state for a year participate in the testing. This might sound easy, but preliminary estimates show that many districts have not yet attained this level of participation. In fact, this component alone will cause many schools and districts to not make AYP. The areas of the state where lower participation has occurred are often highly affluent areas – like Douglas County and Boulder – because parents don’t want their children subjected to all the testing.
The final component of AYP is an indicator that the state chooses for elementary and middle schools, but is mandated to be graduation rate for high schools. The assumption was that most states would choose attendance level for this indicator. However, Colorado chose the percentage of students scoring at advanced proficiency; CDE determined that this would make AYP more attainable than trying to increase attendance. An asset of this indicator is that gifted and talented students and other high achievers will no be overlooked in the drive to improve student achievement – since the main focus of NCLB is on moving students from non-proficient to proficient.
An estimate of how many school districts in Colorado would make AYP, based on their CSAP performance and participation, as well as their graduate rates, indicated that 20 out of the 178 were likely to fulfill all the requirements – that is about 11%. Nationwide, estimates have indicated that only about 10% of schools will make it, a comparable figure. Thus, in the 2005-2006 school year, most schools and districts are likely to be considered “needing improvement.” Should the trend continue for another year, they will be on “corrective action.”
Schools on “improvement” must write a plan to make AYP, report these goals to the public, and allow students in low-performing schools to attend higher-performing schools within the district – and districts must pay to transport these students to the other schools. The U.S. Department of Education says that lack of capacity cannot be used as an excuse not to send students to the better schools if students desire to go. What will such schools do if they don’t have enough classrooms and teachers to accommodate the additional students? The feds do not have an answer to this question. Schools on “corrective action” must still pay for school choice, and in addition, they must provide “supplemental services,” which means tutoring services, for poor and low-performing students who choose to have these services. The state determines the qualifications for the service providers, and it chooses who the available providers will be. If AYP is not attained for an additional year, a plan must be developed for “reconstitution,” which means changing the curriculum and the staff. Failing to make AYP after the fifth year subjects the school to total replacement of staff and program – or conversion to a charter school.
The sanctions for districts and the state in the long run are loss of Title I money and federal money for administration. Even if all make AYP, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results will be used to indicate whether the state’s tests were an accurate measurement of sufficient achievement. Colorado has always scored above the national average on NAEP, so this measure should not be bad for us.
Many concerns and questions arise when one considers all these aspects of AYP. What can be done to increase graduation rates? Will the state continue to fund the CSAPs in Writing, since they don’t count for NCLB? Will we continue the other accountability systems (the SARs and the accreditation requirement of longitudinal growth)? How will school districts determine which accountability system to concentrate their efforts on? Will the upcoming reauthorization of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) change the expectations for special education students? But the most important question is: Will we really be expected to meet all of these NCLB requirements???
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