This report from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) is an update to previous research that tracked the number of schools that had not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as outlined in NCLB. Achieving AYP has proved increasingly difficult as many states require schools to meet progressively higher standards each year leading up to 2014, the year by which NCLB requires that 100 percent of students in every state reach proficiency on state assessments. The CEP has been tracking state and national AYP levels annually since 2005, and this report provides estimates for 2010 data. The previous four years of AYP data come from State Consolidated Performance Reports submitted to the Department of Education. These reports are not yet available for 2010, but CEP created an estimate for 2010 numbers: The number of schools not reaching AYP has risen to 38 percent nationally, the highest percentage since CEP began tracking this data.
Over the last five years, the number of schools not reaching AYP has steadily increased, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently warned that in 2011 the number of schools labeled “failing” by NCLB may skyrocket to 82 percent. In order to meet the “100 percent proficient by 2014” goal, many states have ratcheted up their achievement targets each year. Schools have found it difficult to keep pace, and even many high-performing schools with a few below-proficient students are receiving NCLB’s “failing” label.
In Ohio, CEP estimated that 39 percent of schools did not make AYP in 2010. However, the current AYP rating system provides limited (at best) information on a school’s performance and is in dramatic need of reform. Fordham’s Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael Petrilli provide their own recommendations in their recent ESEA Briefing Book, advocating that AYP be eliminated, while allowing states to design transparent, data-based information systems for schools. With ESEA up for reauthorization this year, Congress has the opportunity to create a metric that replaces AYP and provides a better representation of whether or not a given school is performing adequately.
Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate
Yearly Progress?
Center on Education Policy
Alexandra Usher, Nancy Kober, and Diane Stark Rentner
April 2011