New report: Half of nation’s schools failed to make AYP

The Center on Education Policy released a new report on the number of schools that have failed to make adequate yearly progress  under No Child Left Behind in school year 2010-11. The report –  AYP Results for 2010-11  –  also presents six years of AYP trends in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

According to the report:

–About half (48 percent) of the nation’s schools did not make AYP in 2011. This marked an increase from 39 percent in 2010, and is the highest percentage since NCLB took effect.

–In almost half the states, 50 percent or more of the public schools did not make AYP; in five states and D.C., at least three quarters of schools failed to make AYP.

–The percentage of public schools not making AYP in 2011 varied greatly by state, from about 11 percent in Wisconsin to about 89 percent in Florida. (In Georgia, 27 percent of schools did not meet targets.)

The AJC has a good explainer on the study. Among the points in the story: The findings are far below the 82 percent failure rate that Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicted earlier this year but still indicate an alarming trend that Duncan hopes to address by granting states relief from the federal law. The law requires states to have every student performing at grade level in math and reading by 2014, which most educators agree is an impossible goal.

“Whether it’s 50 percent, 80 percent or 100 percent of schools being incorrectly labeled as failing, one thing is clear: No Child Left Behind is broken,” Duncan said in a statement Wednesday. “That’s why we’re moving forward with giving states flexibility from the law in exchange for reforms that protect children and drive student success.”

Here is a more detailed summation from CEP on its report:

The adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have come under renewed scrutiny due to Congressional efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s decision to consider waivers of key NCLB requirements. Under NCLB, all public school districts and schools must make adequate progress each year in raising student achievement, culminating in 100% of students reaching proficiency by 2014. The Secretary’s plan to provide unprecedented flexibility through waivers was fueled in part by a growing concern that increasing numbers of schools are failing to make AYP each year and that most would fall short of the 2014 goal.

The Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit organization, has been monitoring national AYP data going back to school year 2005-06. In April 2011, we released a report with estimates of the number of schools in the nation and each state that did not make AYP in 2010, as well as trends from 2006 through 2010 in the national percentage of schools not making AYP (Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?).

This new report updates our April report in three respects. First, we have added estimates of the number of schools that did not make AYP in 2011, based on tests administered in school year 2010-11. These data were collected from what we believe to be the most reliable sources available at the time of our research. Second, the 2011 estimates have been added to our trend data to produce six-year trends in the percentages of schools not making AYP for the nation and each state. Third, the 2010 estimates in our April report have been updated with the official numbers of schools that did not make AYP in 2010, obtained from Consolidated State Performance Reports submitted by states to the U.S. Department of Education.

To make adequate yearly progress as defined by NCLB, public schools and districts must meet yearly targets, known as annual measurable objectives (AMOs), set by their state for the percentages of students scoring proficient on state tests and other performance indicators. If a school fails to make AYP for two consecutive years or more, it is considered “in need of improvement” and must submit to certain interventions mandated by NCLB that are intended to improve achievement.

The AMOs, as well as the content and rigor of tests used to measure student achievement, vary greatly among states. For that reason, AYP results should not be directly compared between states, and a state with a higher percentage of schools failing to make AYP should not be assumed to have a weaker educational system. (A more detailed explanation of how AYP is determined and why interstate comparisons are not valid can be found in the 2010 CEP report, How Many Schools and Districts Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress? Four-Year Trends.)

The 2011 data in this report are preliminary estimates of the percentages of schools not making AYP and should not be considered final.

–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog