Question about NCLB and AYP

[northwoods1995]

I have a couple of questions and I'm wondering if anyone can help me.

The school my son is going to is not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress. The school has been flagged for something b/c they haven't met progress for multiple years. I don't really know a whole lot about NCLB so I'm not sure what exactly this means?? Is this a really bad thing/bad school? They didn't meet AYP in Math or Reading in the subgroups of free/reduced lunch, American Indian, and Special Education.

Thanks!

[rabrog]

Discount the special needs one. That's one of the big failure of NCLB as a whole.

To give you an example, one of our schools failed because a single child failed the subject...so the whole school didn't meet AYP. I would want to know how many students failed the subjects and I wouldn't worry about ethnic breakdown.

Jenn

[Aquitane]

Oh, Northwoods, where do I begin?

I am a teacher, have been for 16 years. There are a lot a ways to not make AYP. As a pp stated, please discount the special needs section. It is unthinkable what some children with special needs are required to do in order for the school to make AYP.

Also, only very few children can be dismissed from the test given to measure AYP growth. (I believe it is 1% of the population of the school.) One year we had a little girl who had several physical problems and multiple surgeries. Our assistant superintendent wanted one of us to go to the HOSPITAL and give her the test, so we didn't risk not making AYP. (All the teachers in the school refused. ) So if there were many children with long absences (meaning they are unable to test during the window) the school may not make AYP.

Each state was allowed to pick their own standardized test to use as a growth ruler. Some tests picked easier tests, some states have more stringent tests. Growth is measured as the school overall, individual students/grade levels are not looked at.

Schools in my state must have a school improvement plan with goals and must show how those goals are being worked on/met. Sometimes it's easy to reach the goal, and sometimes difficult.

So it comes down to this: Do YOU like the school? What is the feeling you get when you go there? Does your son like the school? Do you feel he is receiving a good education? Because no matter what the bureaucracy says, what matters is what you and your child feel and think.

[Oriole]

You can disregard that. AYP demands that within just a few years children from every background, SES, and of every ability, as in 100% of school population, will demonstrate mastery in math and reading. While the spirit of it is great, and the intent is wonderful, you can imagine why it's unrealistic.

With every passing year each school is responsible for raising a bar to meet AYP. For example, if our school shows that 85% of the children are meeting the mastery standards, then next year it will be 88%, etc. and (I believe by 2012), each school must show that 100% of students are proficient in math and reading. We are talking about EVERY child, a child that's been sick and out for the test, the child that has parents going through a nasty divorce, a child whose family just moved in from another country, a child that is working through a disability (learning and otherwise).

So, as PP mentioned, trust your gut. Do you like the teacher? Does your child like the school and is making progress as you see fit? Then relax, and don't read the newspapers.

P.S. It's a big headache for the administration that will have to explain all of this to 200 concerned parents, although, they don't have the liberty of being this blunt with NCLB being a legislation and all.

[northwoods1995]

Thank you for the information.

My son went to this school last year for pre-k and I thought it was fine. The classes are small with a teacher plus a full time aide. He loved it! In fact, he was upset last year when we had a snow day and I told him school was closed. He wanted to go to school. He started asking in June when does he get to go back to school.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of music and art and p.e. time the kids receive. The principal seems friendly and approachable. His K teacher seemed a little cold/unfriendly at first but my opinion has improved after meeting with her for a while in the spring.

So this AYP is based solely on standardized test scores? I don't know how many students did not pass. The info I read was just a small blurb and not very detailed.

[blizzard_babe]

If your school, for example, recently got an influx (even a tiny one, in some states if you have five students in a category, they become reportable) of new English language learners, that may have been a factor. If your school is the magnet for a specific special education program, that may have affected results. In addition, if your school did really well and made a lot of progress last year, the bar raised this year... so say they that 7% more students passed the reading test than did last year, and the percentage they were expected to improve was 8%, they "failed." The school I worked at up until this year raised all their test scores every year for five years, but didn't make AYP until last year because they didn't improve by the specified percentage (one year they literally missed by one percentage point on one test).

So... it could be an indicator that something's wrong, or it could not be. Look at the classrooms, look at what your child is learning, look at how your child feels at the end of the day. If all that meets YOUR standards, then that's what matters. If they DON'T meet your standards, even if they made AYP, then that's what matters.

Now, as for what it means for funding, school control, etc... that'll vary by state.

[Aquitane]

Northwoods, it sounds as if your ds loves going to school. That's great, and that's how it should be!

And yes, primarily this is based on your test percentages. Like Oriole stated, by 2014 all schools (well, public schools) must have 100% of students pass (or show proficiency on) "The Test." I think that is statistically impossible...

[LiamnEmma]

Originally Posted by rabrog

Discount the special needs one. That's one of the big failure of NCLB as a whole.

To give you an example, one of our schools failed because a single child failed the subject...so the whole school didn't meet AYP. I would want to know how many students failed the subjects and I wouldn't worry about ethnic breakdown.

Jenn

I'm sorry, but whoever fed you this information was completely off base. Any subgroup is only considered a subgroup if there are enough students within that group to make it a significant percentage of the school population, or the number is greater than 100. So no one individual student can through an entire school off.

I do agree that we should in general not consider the special education students--the reason for the special education status is an inability to make adequate progress to begin with.

[34me]

My two older kids went to a school that was often iffy in AYP. It was the school that was in the boundries of University Family Housing so while the kids were more than capable in their home language, over 50% of the population of the school often arrived kowing very little English. It was also one of the moderate needs magnet schools for kiddos with special needs. However, we loved the school and my 2 older kiddos got a more than adequate education.

[rabrog]

Originally Posted by LiamnEmma

I'm sorry, but whoever fed you this information was completely off base. Any subgroup is only considered a subgroup if there are enough students within that group to make it a significant percentage of the school population, or the number is greater than 100. So no one individual student can through an entire school off.

It happened up here. It was one student in a subgroup and that threw the school into non-compliance. I really don't give a rip how it works because it's all a bunch of BS anyway, but that's what happened here.

Jenn

[Aquitane]

Actually the last school I worked at almost didn't make AYP one year due to a chronically absent student. Our student population was around 600 and we already had 6 students who either due to illness, parental intervention, etc. did not take the test. Luckily, his teachers got him to come to school and had him test. If you are over your percentage of students who do not take the test, you will not make AYP. This is how attendance factors into the game.

And FWIW, I think it's a load of BS too. Should teachers be held accountable for what they can control on their job - absolutely! But some of the stuff is so wild and subjective (at least in my state) that it just isn't fair.

[LiamnEmma]

Originally Posted by rabrog

It happened up here. It was one student in a subgroup and that threw the school into non-compliance. I really don't give a rip how it works because it's all a bunch of BS anyway, but that's what happened here.

Jenn

But a subgroup constitutes 100 or more students. So one student could not be a subgroup. I believe the alternative is 20% of more of the population. So unless there are only 5 students within the school that are in the tested population, it would not be statistically possible for one student to throw a school off. I can totally see a school employee making that claim--I often see school employees figuratively throw the special ed students under the bus--but that employee would be making a false claim.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by blizzard_babe

In addition, if your school did really well and made a lot of progress last year, the bar raised this year... so say they that 7% more students passed the reading test than did last year, and the percentage they were expected to improve was 8%, they "failed."

This is one of the many, many thing about AYP that doesn't make sense. If a school makes a great deal of progress one year, the next year it is almost impossible to show AYP.

Originally Posted by LiamnEmma

But a subgroup constitutes 100 or more students. So one student could not be a subgroup.

I'm not an expert on NCLB, but this doesn't check with my reality. My kids attend a small school and it's the only school in the district. Each grade has less than 100 children. Yet we shown good progress with subgroups. How could they be calculating that if a subgroup has to have at least 100 students, and we don't even have 100 total?

[LiamnEmma]

You missed part of what I said, which is that a subgroup constitutes either 100 students or a significant portion of the student body--last night I said I thought that percentage was 20. Let's just say for the sake of argument that the percentage is 10--but one of the the links below suggests that I was wrong and percentage is not factored in, that a subgroup consists of 100 students--Still, in the initial argument, which is that 1 student can throw off an entire school, if there were a percentage, and that percentage was only 10, there could only be 10 tested students within the entire school...

Let me also say that I'm basing my understanding on the state in which I live and work and breathe results. But, let's look at some links. Here is a school's results (not where I live or work, chosen by the state's capitol). You can see that they have 145 tested students within the school, and the students are delineated by ethnicity and SES. You can see that there is only one subgroup at that school that is considered numerically significant, and that group has more than 100 students. Yes, there are special education students, but their numbers are not considered as a separate factor in the AYP.

Now, here is a snapshot of the district as a whole. All the groups become numerically significant because the population of the district is much much larger than that of the one school, and thus, each subgroup will have it's own AYP to meet in addition to the district as a whole needing to make AYP goals.

Here is one more--now, I'm just mostly doing this randomly, but this last one I chose because their API score is 920, which tells me that greater than 75% of their population is proficient and advanced. Now this school has a total tested population of 325, and their Hispanic/Latino population is 59, which is considered a subgroup, and suggests that some percentage of a population is considered significant. Maybe it's 15%, since that would generate a number equal or greater to 48, and their Asian population is not considered numerically significant.

So, that's why I contend that one student cannot significantly tilt a school's AYP results. I would also suggest that your subgroups are based upon the entire tested population, not broken down by grade, which is different.


eta; And duh! directed at myself! I clicked on the "subgroups" link and it says this;

A numerically significant subgroup for the API is defined as:

* 100 or more students with valid STAR Program scores

OR

* 50 or more students with valid STAR Program scores who make up at least 15 percent of the total valid STAR Program scores.

[Linda on the move]

Thank you for explaining all of that!

[LynnS6]

One of the major flaws of NCLB is the fact that "progress" is based on test scores for children who happen to be at the school at the time. It does not track individual children's progress. It tracks a school's progress. For a school with a stable population, it's essentially the same thing.

But our school has 36% mobility rate. That means in any given year 36% of the students move in and out. So, we have very little control over what kinds of skills these kids come in with - but they have to be tested, even if they've only been there a couple of months. Over the course of 2-4 years, about 70% of the kids move in/out. So, our school is judged on AYP despite the fact that the majority of kids aren't there long enough for our school to have an impact on them.

Clarifying subgroups: How many students = a subgroup depends on how the state defines it. Thus, a subgroup can be as few as THREE students, depending on the state. So, CA looks like it has large subgroups, but other states might well have smaller ones. If your subgroup = 3 students (or even 10), one chronically absent student will indeed screw up your AYP. For example our district's middle school was judged to fail AYP because of how they counted special needs students for the math assessment. The state said they didn't have 95% of students taking the test. The district said they did: The difference? 2 students who were in a self-contained classroom that the state didn't count but the district did.

[blizzard_babe]

The number of students required to constitute a "subgroup" varies by state. Each state is required to test the same specific subgroups, but each state can set its own requirements. In some states it's as high as 100 (apparently), in some states it's as low as 5 (or was a few years back). If you're in one of the states with a low threshold for reporting, one student CAN really throw off your numbers.

[denimtiger]

It's defintely not required for a subgroup to be 100 students in our state. Here, AYP for elementary schools is based on the standardizd test score growth from grade to grade for 4th and 5th graders. In our school, there are at the most 100 kids in a grade level, so AYP is based on 200 kids, total. A "subgroup" of 20 kids would be a significant percentage of that 200. Each child in that 20, then represents 5% of the score being counted. So, yes, a school can easily miss making AYP based on one or two children.

And if a school, (or district) misses AYP in one subject for one subgroup, then the entire school (or district) fails to make AYP for that year.

[spedteacher30]

I'm also a former teacher, but I *would* be concerned about a school not making AYP--our neighborhood elementary school is not making AYP, and we are debating requesting a transfer when our son starts kindergarten.

Our concern is not that the school is bad--in fact we know the teachers and leaders are wonderful. We are concerned about the curriculum decisions that get made as a result of needing to make AYP, and the stress on standardized tests and the pressure on young children. If you have an opportunity to avoid that for your child, I would certainly support that choice.

So, my advice would be to talk to the principal and teachers about what type of test-review activities are going on, about their plans to make AYP, and about the ways they teach reading and math. if you don't like those answers, talk to central office about requesting a transfer.

[annethcz]

Originally Posted by spedteacher30

Our concern is not that the school is bad--in fact we know the teachers and leaders are wonderful. We are concerned about the curriculum decisions that get made as a result of needing to make AYP, and the stress on standardized tests and the pressure on young children. If you have an opportunity to avoid that for your child, I would certainly support that choice.

This is an interesting point. I was actually quite surprised when I was chatting with my kids' teachers and the conversation stumbled onto the subject of standardized testing. They talked about how much they disliked the current math curriculum used in the school, but that they felt like they needed to use it because it was the best preparation for the math portion of standardized tests. They're great teachers and they tweak the curriculum to engage their students. But still I think it's sad it's come to this. FWIW, my kids' school is NOT making AYP... but I would think that curriculum decisions are going to depend on standardized testing to some degree regardless of a schools AYP status. Those schools who aren't making AYP are going to try to improve scores, and those schools who are making AYP are going to try to maintain scores.