Title I-derland

Amid all of the calls for waiver relief from some of the most difficult requirements of NCLB, I think we may need to take a step back and remember the good that has actually come from the law.

Take AYP, for example. It has several well-recognized problems. It looks at only one measure of achievement, has impossible expectations, doesn’t give schools credit for how far they have come, and then, worst of all, does not differentiate between broad and limited failure when dishing out consequences. Clearly, AYP was not as-well-thought out as it should have been, even if most people thought that reauthorization would have fixed its problems before they got out of hand.

But AYP does have a couple of things going for it that are often overlooked. The aspect of AYP I have always liked is that it exposes what I like to call the “dirty little secret” of some high-performing schools. While a school might have great test scores overall, there frequently are one or more of the famous subgroup categories where achievement levels do not keep up with the rest of the school.

AYP did a very good job of helping all of us look at the achievement of everyone in a school and then figure out what to do about it. In schools that were doing poorly overall, this aspect wasn’t quite so critical, but even in those cases, it was helpful to learn, say, that math achievement was much higher than reading achievement. It enabled schools to focus on areas of greatest need. It also gave the district a clear view of where it should go to look at best practices. If a school was doing very well with a group of students that were struggling everywhere else, AYP let us know.

The other thing I personally liked about AYP — something that will possibly be lost as growth models replace it — is the way it measured achievement against a fixed standard. I think we need to examine and encourage growth, particularly in schools that start really low and have so far to go to catch up, but we need to keep the target of real proficiency in mind. To a college admissions office, it doesn’t matter if you are the highest achiever in a high growth school. If your individual achievement as measured by a test such as the ACT isn’t high enough, you won’t get in. Achievement against a standard does matter.

For schools, graduating students who are ready to succeed in a four-year college should be the goal. It gives students the only real choice they have for careers. Not going to college may be an appropriate decision for some students, but they should at least have that choice. And it is no choice at all if they can’t get in.

So, let’s be thoughtful when we do get around to reauthorizing NCLB. Don’t undercut what is working by a rush to fix what is not.

Nancy Connor is the director of federal programs for the Denver Public Schools.

Photo Credit: The Respect Institute