Even successful schools in California are suddenly having trouble keeping up with mandated AYP, thanks to the performance equivalent of a mortgage balloon payment that kicked in this year, requiring all tested subgroups to make a sudden big leap.
The New York Times looks at one such school, Prairie Elementary School in Sacramento, which has steadily improved each of its student groups — Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites, American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English learners, the disabled — toward higher proficiency under NCLB. But this year, they were required to jump by 11 percentage points.
Across the nation, far more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing targets than in any previous year, according to new state-by-state data. And in California and some other states, the problem traces in part to the fact that officials chose to require only minimal gains in the first years after the law passed and then very rapid annual gains later.
“And they’re asking for another 11 percent increase next year and the next, and that’s where I’m saying I just don’t know how,” says Fawzia Keval, Prarie Elementary’s principal. “I’m spending sleepless nights.”
“Part of the reason for the troubles was that the states gambled the law would have been softened when it came up for reauthorization in 2007, but efforts to change it stalled,” notes the Times’ Sam Dillon. ”This year Congress made no organized attempt to reconsider the law. With the nation facing urgent challenges, including two wars and economic turmoil, it could be a year or more before the new president can work with Congress to rewrite the law.”
Translation: Expect to hear this story over and over and over again.
There is no secret why states adopted the balloon payment. Ohio was going to be important in the 2004 election, so they got a sweet deal and everyone copied it.
But accountability hawks shouldn’t be “shocked! shocked!” Had states not adopted the balloon system, their schools would have been failing earlier.
We knew in 2002 that schools were being asked to do the impossible, and that’s why districts resorted to so many tricks and destructive CYA policies. What I heard from the top political leaders was that we had to hold out until the Republican governors in the West talked some sense to Bush. Back then, though, we still thought we were dealing with the “compassionate conservative” who had compromised in Texas.
I question how the NYT can claim that a school where 3/5 of its students are below grade-level proficiency can be legitimately termed “solid”. Granted, they’ve improved from the horrendously low level they started at, but they’ve still got quite a long way to go before they can reasonably be seen as a “solid” school.
Whatever happened to Goals 2000? Could that give some guidance here?