NEA: NEA Today: Inside Scoop -- November 2002

Few provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 (ESEA) are causing as much angst as the ones requiring states to bring every student to "proficiency" in 12 years. To do this, states must now establish "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) targets for schools to meet that are tougher than those under the 1994 ESEA. Missing these targets could mean stiff sanctions. The requirements have states rattled; some are still scrambling to come up with accountability plans. We sort through the confusion.

Why did Congress toughen the requirements for adequate yearly progress in the first place?
Lawmakers felt states had abused the flexibility they'd been given in setting and meeting annual targets under the old ESEA. Under that law, Title I schools only had to make progress as defined by the states, and often with no set deadlines, so the results varied wildly. Ironically, states that had set high standards now look bad. Of the nearly 9,000 schools the Department of Education this summer announced had not met their targets, some 1,500 came from Michigan--which had set tough goals--while none came from Wyoming and Arkansas, which had less rigorous goals.

So what's different now?
Starting in the 2002-03 school year, every state must give tests in reading and math at least once between grades 3-5, grades 6-9, and grades 10-12. In 2005-06, tests must be given annually for every grade between 3-8 and once between grades 10-12. These test results will be the primary measure for AYP.

Exactly how does a state set its AYP targets?
Using test data from the 2001-02 school year, states must first set a baseline, or starting point. The formula for doing this is complicated--states can use test results from the lowest-performing students, or they can use school proficiency rankings. The end result, however, will be this: A large number of students in each state--at least one-fifth--will, by law, start off in schools whose scores are below the baseline. These schools will have at most two years to raise their scores to that baseline. To ensure these students, and all others, make steady progress, a state must raise its achievement bar in equal increments for the next 12 years. The first increase must be in 2004-05 and then at least once every three years.

How does a school know it has reached its target?
For many, this is the scary part. Schools are only considered successful in making their AYP target when each of four specified subgroups in a school--not simply the student population as a whole--meets the same target. That means test results for students with disabilities, major racial and ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged students, and students with limited English proficiency will all be broken out separately and measured against the same target as the test results for the school as a whole.

What was the thinking behind this?
Lawmakers wanted to make sure that schools did not mask the performance of lower-achieving students--or allow schools to focus on higher-achieving students and neglect the more challenged groups.

What's so bad about that?
The big fear is that if even one subgroup fails to make the target in math or reading, the whole school will be identified as needing improvement. That means thousands of schools that make their targets overall--or make them for all but one of the subgroups--could still be subjected to sanctions. State leaders have predicted that more than 60 percent of schools in this country could be subject to penalty within a few years because of this provision.

The law does carry a so-called "safe harbor" clause to help schools that miss their targets for one or two subgroups, but most experts don't believe it will offer much relief.

Is there flexibility anywhere?
The flexibility lies in an obscure, but important, provision that allows individual states to determine how many students will be in a subgroup for the results to be "statistically reliable." Depending on whether that number is, say, 10 or 50, the ramifications are huge. If a state sets the number at 50, for example, and 30 percent of the schools in the state don't have that many kids in a subgroup, then those schools don't have to break out test results and will be far less vulnerable to missing their AYP targets. This provision is sure to stir up controversy down the road. Already some states are talking about setting high numbers to help minimize failure rates. That's why NEA strongly encourages members to keep tabs on who's setting this number and how they come up with it.

What happens to a school that misses its targets?
If a school fails to make AYP for two consecutive years, it becomes classified as "needing improvement" and must develop a two-year improvement plan and get help from the district. Each student in that school will get the option of transferring to a better public school in the district. In each subsequent year of needing improvement, the penalties get progressively tougher until finally, after four years of missing AYP targets, a school is identified for restructuring.

--Marilyn Milloy

For more on AYP

Call NEA's ESEA hotline, 866/373-ESEA (3732).
See official guidelines at the Department of Education's website, www.nochildleftbehind.gov.
Read "No state left behind: The challenges and opportunities of the ESEA 2001" by the Education Commission of the States at www.ecs.org.