For all its flaws, the No Child Left Behind Act has a lofty
goal: that every student in the nation will be proficient by 2014.
To secure this end, each state was allowed to decide how Adequate
Yearly Progress would be measured.
For all its flaws, the No Child Left Behind Act has a lofty goal: that every student in the nation will be proficient by 2014. To secure this end, each state was allowed to decide how Adequate Yearly Progress would be measured.
California decided, reasonably enough, that every school must make annual progress that keeps them on track to have all students in the school score proficient or advanced by 2014. To stay on track, by 2005, 24.4 percent of students must be proficient in English language arts, and 26.5 percent must be proficient in math.
California’s internal system, the Academic Performance Index, has an entirely different way to measure whether a school or district has met its goal. The API requires that every year scores must improve by 5 percent of the distance to an API of 800.
This is not particularly confusing: two systems, one measuring by benchmark, the other by whether any progress was made. San Benito County schools mostly are making progress toward their target growth as measured by API, and many are struggling to make adequate yearly progress, as measured by the federal AYP.
As an analogy, consider the task of running a marathon, a 26-mile race. The federal AYP system says that to reach the end of the race in 13 hours, we must run two miles every hour. If we do not reach mile marker 10 after five hours, we have not made adequate hourly progress.
The California API system says we have achieved our target growth if we run 5 percent of 26 miles the first hour, or 1.3 miles. We then must run at least 5 percent of the remaining distance the next hour, or 1.23 miles. Then 1.17 miles the third hour, and so forth.
At the API rate, will California ever achieve 100 percent proficiency? Zeno’s paradox says not.
Therefore, we cannot support State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell in his recent call to change federal requirements so that API target growth is used in place of the current AYP.
There is no confusion. There are two systems that measure progress differently. When we do well in one, we will celebrate. When we do poorly in the other, we will work harder. And, celebrating and working harder, we will educate the students of San Benito County.
