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Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is a term found in the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) and one that most educators hear constantly. It is a shorthand method by which public schools in this country are now judged. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say for the purpose of this article that AYP is based heavily on scores achieved by students on a high stakes, standardized test. But, that is not all that is required. By 2014 every student at every school must demonstrate grade level mastery on these tests.
There are still many other criteria to be considered – 37 in all. Each of them must be met before any school can be said to have achieved AYP, according to NCLB. When a school misses just one criterion that school is still failing to make satisfactory progress.
NCLB’s real problem
The real problem with NCLB is that it expects perfection by 2014 or every school will be labeled a failure. Only because NCLB was to be implemented incrementally have any schools been able to be designated as reaching AYP. Each year, however, the bar is raised for every school and each year will find more and more schools failing as indicated in the listing below.
Many believe AYP is doing exactly what some politicians wanted it to do – cause public schools to be designated as failing, making it easier for students to transfer out and take money with them. No matter that the private school, charter school, or home school might not be as good or any better than the public school they left. There will be no testing or follow-up of those programs to assure public tax dollars are buying a quality education for the student who transfers out of the local public school.
More and more
schools are failing
Each year as the standards tighten, more and more public schools in more and more states will join the ranks of those failing to meet AYP. The list below, of schools by states, is based on 2007-08 test scores. Those states releasing scores to date are as follows:
Alaska – failure rate increased from 34.1 to 41.3 percent
California – failure rate increased from 33 to 48 percent
Connecticut – failure rate rose to 40 percent, 100 more schools than last year failed AYP
Florida – failure rate increased from 67.2 to 76.1 percent
Indiana – failure rate up from 48 to 56 percent
Montana – went from 10 percent failure to 28 percent
New Hampshire – number failing for two years went from 133 to 183
North Dakota – failure went up from 9.4 to 36 percent
Vermont – failures increased from 61 to 116
Washington – needing improvement grew from 280 to 628 schools
Wisconsin – AYP failures up from 87 to 156
Perfection is unrealistic
Public schools nor any other social institution created by the government or by man can or will ever reach perfect achievement of its purposes or goals. Yet, this is the task established in law by 2014 for our nation’s schools.
One party says when its candidate is elected it will fund and fix NCLB to make it workable. The other party’s platform says nothing about NCLB, but it does mention private school vouchers, home schooling and merit pay. It also talks of principals having authority over teacher assignment without regard to local policy or contract.
Before voting, every education employee should carefully examine the candidate’s and the party’s position on education. This election for president can make a real difference in education for years to come.