Go Figure!

Try to make sense of this: The Norfolk City Public Schools District in Virginia nets one of the nation's top prizes in education—the Broad Prize for Public Education—  for its success in raising the test scores of poor and minority students.

Great news, right?
Well, wait for the kicker. Even as Norfolk wins its well-deserved honor, it fails to meet the adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals, as set by the No Child Left Behind law. The NCLB formula makes it very difficult for large urban districts, like Norfolk, to "make AYP," even if students make substantial gains year after year. That's because the law requires impressive (not just improved) scores from "subgroups" like English-language learners (smaller districts with few such students are allowed to skip the requirement). Other Broad Prize runner-ups, including San Francisco, also got F's from the feds.

"Here we have a district that made gains the whole nation recognized, yet NCLB doesn't see it," says Monte Mercer, president of the Education Association of Norfolk. "Just ludicrous."

—Ritu Sharma