Word: grades
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Under the law's most visible stipulation, states must test public school students in reading and math every year from third through eighth grade, plus once in high school, and reveal the results for each school or face a loss of federal funds. Just as critical, schools must break out test results for certain groups: blacks, Hispanics, English-language learners, learning-disabled students. This has embarrassed many a top suburban school where high-flying majorities have masked the low achievement of minorities and special-ed students. The law insists--with consequences for failure--that schools make annual progress toward closing...
Whether NCLB is achieving its objectives remains an open question. Fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) rose sharply from 1999 to 2004, but most of the gains occurred before the law took effect. The achievement gap appears to be narrowing in some spots--fourth- and eighth-grade math scores for minorities, for instance--but not others. The gap between white and black eighth-graders has widened slightly in math, for example. Gains for eighth-graders in general remain stubbornly elusive...
...addition, the do-or-die AYP system creates perverse incentives. It rewards schools that focus on kids on the edge of achieving grade-level proficiency--like those 11 students in Blaine's math-review class. There's no incentive for schools to do much of anything for the kids who are on grade level or above, which is one reason the law is unpopular in wealthier, high-achieving communities. And sadly, says O'Connell, "NCLB provides no incentive to work on the kids far below...
...jumped four reading levels. Garris offered the boy his hearty congratulations, but later he ruefully noted that the achievement won't be recognized under the terms set by NCLB. "This child has had tremendous growth, but he'll still bomb the PSSA test because he isn't on grade level," says Garris. What's worse, a child who has worked so hard will be stuck with a sense of failure. At test time, says Garris, "some kids get so frustrated they...
...alternative to AYP? Most educators, Garris included, prefer a more flexible measure of student improvement known as the growth model. In this approach, schools track the progress of each student year to year. Success is defined by a certain amount of growth, even if the student isn't on grade level. So a child like that Blaine third-grader would be judged a success--and his teachers and school would get credit for his achievement. "The growth model," says O'Connell, "is a much more accurate portrayal of a school's performance...