Sixteen chances
John Heim
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
IN AUGUST, the Kansas State Department of Education released a preliminary list of “failing schools or districts.” The list was reported widely by the media, without much explanation of what is truly meant by No Child Left Behind.
The Emporia Public Schools was among those districts listed as not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in reading. Because we did not make AYP in reading last year, this would make us a district “on improvement.”
We have filed appeals to correct some of the assessment data and we are hopeful the district will be removed from the list. However, if Emporia remains on the final list to be released by KSDE on Nov. 15, we must quickly assemble a community-based team to write a new improvement plan.
That being said, it’s important that our community understand some of the intricacies of NCLB and the AYP targets.
The student achievement rules of NCLB contain two main components. The first requires all children to reach the “proficient” level by 2014. Proficiency is determined by each state using annual assessments in both reading and math. These assessments are given in February through April to all students in grades 3-8 and once in high school. The results are released in the fall, and schools and districts must have more and more students at the proficient level every year, or risk not making AYP.
The second component of NCLB says that proficiency is measured not just for an entire group of students, but also for “subgroups” of students. The federal government has identified nine potential subgroups. In Emporia, we have seven: white, Hispanic, African-American, Asian, low socio-economic status (SES), English language learners (ELL), and special education. When we combine our all-student group with the seven subgroups in both reading and math, our district has 16 opportunities for success or “failure.”
In order to be counted as a subgroup, a district or a school must have only 30 students in the subgroup. The larger and more diverse the school district, the more opportunities it has to not make AYP.
I certainly agree that all students should reach a proficient level and all educators should have that as a goal. However, there are technical problems associated with the law that raise serious concerns.
The ELL subgroup, and in most cases the special education subgroup, represent a classic Catch-22. As students gain skills, they are exited from these programs. Therefore, the ELL and special education students who are most capable of reaching proficiency are no longer in the programs and their successes are not reflected in the scores of those subgroups.
One subgroup can cause a school or district to miss the AYP target in several areas. For example, a group of ELL students who did not make AYP might also be in an ethnic subgroup, and a low SES subgroup. The same small number of students can affect AYP in many different subgroups.
Many statisticians argue that 100 percent proficiency is not statistically possible. As scores approach 100 percent, it is more and more difficult to actually achieve the perfect score. There also are philosophical problems with NCLB such as its emphasis on testing and an emphasis on reading and math at the expense of the arts and sciences.
These are all discussions that our federal leaders need to hear. In the meantime, Congressman Jerry Moran is making an effort to help local districts deal with technical aspects of the law that need to be fixed. He and Dennis Moore have proposed changes in the law that can be seen at http://www.jerrymoran.house.gov/ under Legislation Introduced. These changes are welcome and will bring some sanity to the day to day implementation of NCLB.
kst8wct (anonymous) says...
Sad to see that the home of the school known for graduating quality teachers, and home of the teachers' hall of fame can't meet federal guidelines.
November 14, 2006 at 9:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )