The Accuracy and Effectiveness of Adequate Yearly Progress NCLBs School Evaluation System

flawed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

East Lansing, Mich.,

Sept. 25, 2006— Adequate Yearly

Progress (AYP), the main indicator of academic achievement under No Child Left

Behind, is an unproven, unrealistic and underfunded system for improving student

performance in the nation’s public schools, according to a policy brief funded

by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

AYP –and the accompanying

penalties for failure –should be suspended and additional research into its

effectiveness should be conducted before schools invest any more time or money

or suffer anymore consequences for failure to achieve it, according to the

policy brief titled The Accuracy and Effectiveness of Adequate yearly

Progress, NCLB’s Evaluation System by Professor William J. Mathis of the

University of Vermont.

The AYP requirement is the

driving force behind NCLB. It uses yearly gains in standardized test scores to

measure school and student achievement. Failure by a school to meet yearly

performance goals triggers sanctions and “corrective action” plans. The goal of

AYP is that every child masters their state’s standardized tests by 2014.

According to Mathis, a

University of Vermont researcher, “AYP is not an effective instrument for

measuring school performance and it is not sparking school reform as promised.

Corrective action must be taken to prevent more harm to students and schools,

and to develop a tool that will do the job.”

The policy brief reveals that:

The meager improvements

in test scores are unlikely to be the result of the AYP process and are too

modest to achieve the goal of 100 percent mastery by 2014;

Funding is inadequate to

effectively implement the program, particularly for high poverty schools;

The AYP process is

driving schools to focus only on subjects that are tested at the expense of

other important instruction;

The nation’s poor and

diverse schools are hit hardest by the negative effects of AYP.

Many of the brief’s conclusions mirror an earlier study released by the Great

Lakes Center which found that nearly every school in the Great Lakes states will

be labeled as “failing” by 2014 due to inadequate funding, lack of flexibility

and other problems associated with the AYP requirement of NCLB.

The full policy brief is available at http:// www.greatlakescenter.org .

The mission of

the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to identify,

develop, support, publish and widely disseminate empirically sound

research on education policy and practices designed to improve the quality

of public education for all students within the Great Lakes Region.

Visit the Great Lakes

Center website at: http://www.greatlakescenter.or g

Contact:
William J. Mathis (802) 247-5757 (e-mail) wmathis@sover.net