As a reminder, the statistical data that evaluates every public school in the United States is reported as Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), a fixture of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
This data is the factor that determines whether or not you have reached the appropriate AYP benchmark and that’s what makes you accountable-whether you are a school district, school in a district, teacher’s class in the school, or student.
Analyzing data
All schools receive their AYP score sometime in the summer or fall based on the results of a “determining test” administered the previous spring. Since 2002 the statistical data available tells the federal department of education how many students are proficient in reading, language arts, and math for that particular year.
The benchmarks are precise: a fixed percentage of students must reach proficiency, the percentage per year decided by each state.
No matter the student’s ability to speak English; status as receiving Special Education support; family’s income and education level; condition of the school’s facilities or its ability to provide students with adequate materials; not to forget the quality of the determining exam.
By 2014 the Act specifies that 100% of the students in the United States will be proficient in those two curricular areas.
NCLB legislation requires that exams to measure performance are given in third grade, seventh grade, and tenth grade. Many states, however, require more. In California tests are given yearly, second grade on.
Measuring performance to ensure quality is not new. Business people have developed practical models to design excellent products and to ensure that the products are marketable. Those business models share a few basic elements.
The people assigned to an undertaking understand the desired outcomes and have the tools needed to achieve those outcomes. Assessments - based on valid criteria that reliably measure progress towards the desired outcomes - are made at regular intervals.
The team responsible for the undertaking analyzes the results of each assessment to determine what’s working (and therefore needs to be maintained or enhanced) and what’s not working (and therefore needs to be improved).
Here’s the rub. States authorize tests, school districts organize the distribution of tests, schools give tests and students take the exams, fulfilling the assessment tool element.
All the other elements (e.g., standards of success, analysis, program improvement) are not outlined in the NCLB legislation and, even eight years later, are barely understood or implemented by many states, much less school sites.
A state department of education website can show the reader in detail the percent of improvement each school is accountable for each year. The teacher’s unions explain implementation difficulties in detail for each state. Go to your union’s website.
You will have considerable difficulty finding tools* that show how to assure school improvement from year to year.
(*An example is Take Care!, a tool to improve communication strategies among adults in the school community, striving to ensure student success.)
Tags: accountability, measuring performance, school improvement