States slow to announce schools on AYP lists
8/12/03 -- With the start of school just around the corner, most states are just beginning to release lists of schools that failed to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
States are expected to identify more schools than last year, as the bar for meeting AYP is raised annually. For example, in Louisiana, which has published its list of schools in need of improvement, 65 schools made the state's list, compared to 23 last year.
NCLB requires all schools and districts to show that all students in grades 3-8 -- and all subgroups of students -- are proficient in math and reading by 2012. States had to come up with plans for achieving this goal, but the U.S. Education Department didn't approve some of these plans until June.
Title I schools on the list for two years in a row must offer parents the option of transferring their children to a better-performing school, with the district paying the transportation costs. After three years, the school must provide supplemental services. Each year the sanctions for schools who still fail to make AYP get tougher, including restructuring the staff and takeover by the state.
According to a July 30 report by the Stateline news service, two-thirds of states had not yet published lists of schools failing to make AYP.
In Georgia, the state education department missed its Aug. 1 deadline for releasing the list of schools failing to make AYP, which means most schools won't have enough time to notify parents, process transfer requests, and implement the transfer until after the school year begins.
Parents are likely to be confused when they are notified that a school that has been considered successful under state standards comes up short under the different standards in NCLB.
California's preliminary report, released July 24, says about two-thirds of all schools in the state failed to make AYP, with a final report expected to be released Aug. 15. That report also is expected to list a large percentage of the state's districts that failed to make AYP.
Many of the schools made the list because they failed to comply with the NCLB provision that requires 95 percent of students to be tested. In California, it tends to be the parents of higher-performing students who opt out, skewing the test results.
CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin says, "Our greatest challenge is to use all of the resources at our disposal to give the best advice and counsel to our districts on how to implement these new requirements, and, just as important, how to explain it to the public."
"With over 1,000 school districts in California, ranging in size from eight kids to over 740,000, there is no satisfactory one-size-fits-all approach that is going to make any sense, especially when all of your schools can succeed, but the district can fail," Plotkin says.
"Or, even more problematic," he notes, "schools can be showing progress and student success under the state's accountability system, but be judged failing by the federal government." He calls NCLB "a classic example of how the farther away from the classroom you get, the more abstract decision making can be about the idiosyncratic nature of schools and the real life of kids."
In North Carolina, state board of education Chairman Howard Lee urged caution in looking at the state list of schools failing to make AYP.
"The 'all-or-nothing' nature of this federal model will be very tough for many of our schools, particularly schools that serve a more diverse student population," he says. "A school may be doing a very good job as a whole but miss the mark for all but a few students."
There are 18 Title I public schools and 19 charter schools on North Carolina's list of schools in need of improvement.
The Minnesota Department of Education released a preliminary list in July of 259 schools failing to make AYP. Districts have an opportunity to appeal the designation before a final list is published this month.
According to state officials, 14 of the schools will have to offer a transfer option and 18 will have to pay for tutoring for poor students. Many of the schools on the list failed to make AYP because fewer than 95 percent of students took the state assessments.
Illinois has not yet put out an official list, but Kevin Bell, assistant director for government relations at the Illinois Association of School Boards estimates about 625 schools won't make AYP, based on data from the state's testing company.
Having the list come out so late in the summer will "create a major problem for schools," he says. Even if schools suspected they might fail to make AYP, they are not going to enter into a transfer agreement with another district or notify parents until they know for sure.
Districts still have a chance to appeal, Bell notes. Last year, data entry mistakes were made, and five or six schools were taken off the list.
"We want to implement this," Bell says. "We want to use data-driven decision making, but we don't have the data. The tests were administered in April, and we're just now getting the data."
Last year, the first year the NCLB sanctions went into effect, a relatively small percentage of eligible families participated nationwide.
In California, only about 5 percent of eligible students took advantage of the supplemental services option.
And in Maryland, where 100 schools were designated as needing improvement, only 400 students transferred.
And in many large cities, there were far fewer slots available in better-performing public schools than students eligible to transfer.
NCLB also requires districts to offer parents the option of transferring their children out of any school that has been identified as "persistently dangerous." NCLB also requires schools to allow students who are victims of a violent offense the opportunity to transfer to another school. Both provisions take effect for the current school year.
So far, the way most states have defined "persistently dangerous," very few schools will be affected.
Virginia, California, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina have announced they have no schools meeting their state's criteria for persistently dangerous schools. New Jersey released a list of just seven unsafe schools
Pennsylvania expects to release its list of unsafe schools in late August, says Timothy Allwein, assistant executive director for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
That means if there are schools identified as "persistently dangerous," there won't be enough time for people to make transfer arrangements, before school starts.
NSBA has developed extensive guidance on AYP and other aspects of NCLB. See the advocacy section on NSBA's Web site, www.nsba.org.
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| Reproduced with permission from the 2003 issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |