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SEO Ed Digest
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Vol. 3, Issue 11
November 2006
Bringing urban P-16 education resources to policymakers, parents, advocates, and district and school staff in the District of Columbia
Research on DC Schools
National Lessons Learned
New Ideas
The State Education Office does not endorse the views expressed in the resources and reports contained in the SEO Ed Digest.
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This issue of the SEO Ed Digest covers recent and background research on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and more specifically, on Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AYP, a provision in NCLB, sets a new standard for defining success. Each state sets specific benchmark goals for the percentage of students in each school that are expected to demonstrate proficiency on state tests in language arts and math. These goals are then raised over time so that by 2014, all states will have 100% proficiency, meaning that all students will be proficient in language arts and math. This issue includes information on what AYP is, changes that have been made to AYP since NCLB became law, and how states have responded to meet AYP. The requirements of NCLB and meeting AYP are especially important to the District of Columbia because with the recent change of the assessment test used by the District of Columbia public schools and charter schools from SAT-9 to DC-CAS, the number of schools that met AYP this past year fell significantly.
Articles
Interactive Resources
Reports
Articles
Interactive Resources
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a federally mandated program that requires all public schools, school districts, and states to demonstrate “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) on the state tests and other indicators. There are additional indicators that have to be reported but do not require standards for progress. The first year of data reporting for NCLB was 2003. This site has information on AYP and AYP reports for the District of Columbia Public Schools and public charter schools. The following reports can be generated on the site: report cards; a one-year AYP report; AYP status report; school lists; and truancy reports.
 
This District of Columbia Public Schools website has information on the No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of the site is to help parents and the community better understand the details of the law. The site has information on the provisions of the law, which include: school choice; accountability and adequate yearly progress; testing; highly qualified teachers/paraprofessionals; and uniform management information and reporting system.
Reports
As states implement and refine systems for measuring progress under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), parents, teachers, school officials, and policymakers have raised many questions and concerns about what the law requires. This guide is an effort to summarize the accountability requirements of Title I of NCLB and to clear up some of the common misconceptions.
Delivering the Promise: State Recommendations for Improving No Child Left Behind (February 2005) http://www.ncsl.org/programs/educ/nclb_report.htm
In March 2004, the Executive Commission of the National Conference of State Legislatures created a task force of state legislators and legislative staff and asked them to focus on the question: how can we effect improvements to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) through additional congressional or administrative actions? The task force was directed to dissect the law, conduct hearings throughout the country, consult with practitioners and other experts, examine the pertinent literature and research, and formulate a comprehensive set of recommendations geared toward improving NCLB, making it more workable, more responsive to variations among states, and more effective in improving elementary and secondary education. Their report offers recommendations on the following: the federal role in education reform; adequate yearly progress (AYP); students with disabilities and limited English proficiency; flexibility for states to address unique schools and districts; highly qualified teacher and paraprofessional requirements; and the cost of closing the achievement gap. Chapter 2 focuses on AYP, and the task force gives numerous recommendations to make AYP more valid, accurate, and a more effective tool in measuring student achievement. Recommendations for AYP include the following: provide states much more flexibility in meeting the objectives of the AYP provisions; give states the option of adding or substituting a “student growth” approach to testing and accountability , rather than the “successive group” approach prescribed by NCLB; allow states to use multiple measures rather than relying exclusively on standardized tests to evaluate performance; reduce the overidentification of failure and make the AYP provisions less prescriptive, rigid, and absolute; and allow states to decide the order of interventions when a school is identified as being in need of improvement.
In order to receive federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dollars, each state has to submit a consolidated state accountability plan that describes in detail how a state will meet the requirements of NCLB. This plan includes how a state defines AYP. This report is the state accountability plan for the District of Columbia public and public charter schools. It was submitted to the US Department of Education on June 3, 2003.
From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act (March 2006)
Since 2002, the Center on Education Policy has studied federal, state and local implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In March 2006, CEP released its fourth report entitled From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act. In this report, the authors make four broad conclusions about NCLB: 1) teaching and learning have changed as a result of NCLB; 2) scores on state tests have risen in a large majority of states and school districts and many officials surveyed cited that NCLB requirements for adequate yearly progress (AYP) was an important factor in rising achievement, but far more credited school district policies and programs as important contributors to these gains; 3) the number of schools identified for improvement under the NCLB accountability provisions has remained fairly steady since last year, despite earlier predictions that these numbers would soar over time; and 4) although all school districts are affected by NCLB, urban districts are increasingly experiencing the greatest effects.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 has brought about a sea of change in the United States. While the act has its detractors—as well as its admirers—among educators, parents, governmental officials, and the media, there is little doubt that NCLB has cast new light on public schools by using hard data to focus on achievement gaps at the individual school level. This topical summary discusses one key aspect of NCLB: adequate yearly progress (AYP). It reviews the major requirements of AYP, examines how the five Northwestern states determine AYP, and reports what the current data tell us about the achievement gaps among groups of students in these states. Finally, this report looks at how the top state education officials are viewing AYP results.
This powerpoint presentation, presented at the National Title I Directors' Conference in 2003, gives an overview of the No Child Left Behind Act’s accountability measures and information on adequate yearly progress (AYP). The presentation covers information on: what type of accountability system a state should adopt; what is required in developing the performance index AYP; how a school or district makes AYP; how a state makes AYP; school improvement; local annual review; the school improvement timeline; corrective action; restructuring; and the annual state report card.
This report examines student achievement on state assessments in order to determine whether the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have helped to spur improvements on these fronts. The authors found that, after two full school years of implementation, states have made progress in reading and math at the elementary grades, but results are lagging in the middle grades and high schools, particularly when it comes to narrowing the gaps. The authors examined secondary-school test results in states that made at least three years’ worth of comparable data publicly available (which was 28 states for the middle-school grades and 23 states for the high school level). Findings include the following: in math, 24 states improved overall performance at the middle-grades; in reading, however, overall student achievement rose in only 16 of the 27 states examined. Reading achievement declined in eight states and did not change in three more. Fewer states raised overall performance in high schools: on math tests, 14 states made overall gains; six dropped in overall achievement, and one saw no change. In reading, 11 states improved overall scores, while results declined in six states and remained flat in three
States are continuing to find new ways to calculate adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in order to raise the number of schools and districts that meet the law’s student achievement targets. Over the past few years, the US Department of Education has allowed states to make many changes in the way they determine AYP, including the following: confidence intervals, which make allowances for natural fluctuations in test scores and essentially bolster a school’s or subgroup’s percentage of student scoring at proficient levels; performance indexes that allow schools to get “partial credit” for the performance of students below the proficient level; retesting, which allows students to retake a different version of the same test and permits schools to use a student’s best score to count toward AYP; and increased minimum subgroup sizes, which mean that in many schools, subgroups do not get counted for AYP purposes. Over the past year, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has shown more willingness to experiment with flexibility in some areas of the law. She has even been willing to suspend parts of the law by switching the order of sanctions and allowing a few districts to provide tutoring to students before offering them school choice. She has also issued new rules for testing students with disabilities that are likely to make it easier for this subgroup to meet AYP targets. The changes, explained more fully in this report, have the effect of making it easier for schools to make AYP.
Each year states release lists of schools and school districts that have not made adequate yearly progress (AYP) during the past year in raising student achievement. Schools and districts appear on these lists because they have fallen short of the annual test score targets and other performance benchmarks set by states to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This process of monitoring and reporting on AYP is a central concept of NCLB. It is meant to highlight schools and districts that are not performing as well as they should and stimulate actions that will improve teaching and learning. Whether the AYP requirements are a fair and accurate gauge of school quality is a matter of intense debate, as discussed at the end of this report. This report also looks to answer the following questions: What are the main AYP requirements and why do they matter so much? How many schools are affected? Why could a school fail to make AYP? What does all this mean for schools and states? What can be done to improve AYP requirements?
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