Adequate Yearly Progress
Encyclopedia
Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is a measurement defined by the United States
federal No Child Left Behind Act
that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school
and school district
in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized test
s. AYP has been identified as one of the sources of controversy surrounding George W. Bush administration
's Elementary and Secondary Education Act
. Private school
s do not have to make AYP.
working under guidance from the federal government.
According to the Department of Education, AYP is a diagnostic tool that determines how schools need to improve and where financial resources should be allocated. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige
wrote, "The statute gives States and local educational agencies significant flexibility in how they direct resources and tailor interventions to the needs of individual schools identified for improvement... schools are held accountable for the achievement of all students, not just average student performance."
The No Child Left Behind Act makes provisions for schools that do not demonstrate adequate yearly progress. Those that do not meet AYP for two years in a row are identified as "schools in need of improvement" and are subject to immediate interventions by the State Education Agency
in their state. First steps include technical assistance and then, according to the Department of Education, "more serious corrective actions" occur if the school fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress.
/language arts
, mathematics
, and either graduation rates, for high schools and districts, or attendance rates for elementary and middle/junior high schools. States are in charge of developing their own criteria for meeting AYP and must submit them for approval. Upon receipt, all criterion provided by the states will be peer reviewed by a panel of people, including representatives, parents, teachers, and state and local educational agencies. After review the states will receive feedback and recommendations from panelists on how to better align their criteria with the statute of No Child Left Behind. These requirements include ten specific guidelines:
1. A single statewide accountability system which is applied to all public schools and local education agencies.
2. The state accountability system must include all public school students.
3. A State's definition of AYP must be based on expectations for growth in student achievement that includes that all students will be proficient in reading and math by 2013-2014.
4. A State must make annual decisions about the achievement of all public schools and local education agencies.
5. All public schools and local education agencies will be held accountable for the achievement of all individual subgroups.
6. A State's definition of AYP must be based primarily on the State's academic assessments.
7. A State's definition of AYP must include graduation rates for high schools, as well as an additional indicator, which may be selected by the states, for middle and elementary schools (such as attendance rates).
8. AYP must be based on reading
/language arts
and mathematics
achievement objectives.
9. A State's accountability system must be statistically valid and reliable.
10. To make AYP as a school, a State must ensure that it has assessed at least 95% of students in each subgroup (special education, English language learners, low income, race/ethnicity) enrolled.
Currently, schools are allowed to appeal their AYP findings to their State Education Agency and/or the U.S. Department of Education, if applicable. Appeals have been made in account of standardized test
results and data collected by testing companies such as Educational Testing Service
.
in order to measure AYP. These assessments allow State Education Agencies to develop target starting goals for AYP. After those are developed, states must increase student achievement in gradual increments in order for 100 percent of the students to become proficient on state assessments by the 2013-14 school year. The Illinois Department of Education reports, "The NCLB Act is very prescriptive with regard to how this is to be done – very little flexibility is afforded to states. The same process was used to establish starting points for reading and math." Using assessment data from 2002, the U.S. Department of Education determined what specific percentages of students each state is required to make proficient in each subject area. Special considerations were made for students with limited English
proficiency and individuals with disabilities. Once those percentages were determined, each State Department of Education is required to ensure the standards are the same for each public school, each district, and each subgroup of students, irrespective of differences.
Requirements for the percentage of growth is determined on a state-by-state basis. In Illinois those requirements include:
Additionally, state education agencies must determine the yearly progress of districts, and identify districts in need of improvement. Some states, including Missouri
, have lowered standards in order to assure the success of their schools and districts meeting AYP.
If Title I schools do not meet AYP for two consecutive years, they are placed in "Choice" School Improvement Status, which means they must develop an improvement plan, provide students the option to transfer to a different school and provide them transportation to get there, and they must use part of their Title I funds for professional development for their teachers and staff. If a school does not make AYP for three consecutive years, they will be in "Supplemental Services" School Improvement Status, which means that in addition to all the "Choice" requirements above, they must also use some of their Title I funds to support students by providing tutoring or after-school programs from a state-approvded provider. If a school fails AYP for four years in a row they enter "Corrective Action" Improvement Status, where they must provide both "Choice" and "Supplemental Services" as well as choose one of the following: Replace responsible staff, Implement a new curriculum, Decrease a school’s management authority; Appoint an external expert to advise school, or restructure the internal organization of the school. Lastly, if a school fails AYP for 5 years or more, they must plan to and implement one of the following:
These "other major governance restructuring" strategies were most popular in restructuring schools in 2007-2008, and allows schools to do a variety of things to improve their schools such as narrow the grade range, re-open as a theme school, close the school, create smaller learning communities, or create their own option that is not provided by the Department of Education.
The option of extending NCLB-required sanctions to non-Title I schools does exist; however, there is little current research indicating the implementation of this practice.
include new and more rigorous curriculum
; the placement of "graduation
specialists" in each high school
across the state; comprehensive high school redesign focused on rigorous and relevant education, and; integrated technology
throughout learning, including the Georgia Virtual School and a free online SAT
prep course.
However, outside critics and analysts continue to make their own suggestions on improvements for Adequate Yearly Progress. One example of this is Robert Manwaring (a Senior Policy Analyst at Education Sector), who has many suggestions at the Federal, State and Local level. On the federal level, Manwaring believes that No Child Left Behind has been too "hands-off" and that states have been avoiding hard choices such as replacing people in failing schools. Moreover, he believes intervention in low-performing districts has been too slow to occur. He believes the key is for the federal government to insist on heavier oversight from the states and to propose shorter timelines for quicker actions to be taken with consistently failing schools. In addition, he believes the federal government should continue to invest in school improvement, but move from a "formula-driven program" to competitive grants, which will reward schools who make drastic improvement in low-performing schools. Moreover, he believes that states should be in charge of approving the "other major restructuring plans" (as discussed above) for schools, in order to ensure that they are the right steps to drastically improve student performance. Lastly, he believes Title I funding "comparability" requirements should be changed to make sure that all Title I schools receive an accurate amount of state and local funding. On the state level, Manwaring believes that states are reluctant to intervene in low-performing schools, and that many state departments lack the experience or capacity to facilitate school turnaround anyway. He suggests that states should identify schools in need of improvement, and require districts to implement an intervention model, during which the state will provide support and monitor progress. In addition, he believes they should take control of charter schools by ensuring effective charter oversight, closing low-performing charter schools and providing a fair amount of funding and facilities to successful charters. And lastly, states should monitor school restructuring closely and be prepared to step in when needed. On the local level, Manwaring believes that since local school districts are closest to the schools, and have the flexibility necessary to act immediately for students, they should change their policies to ensure that schools have an equal amount of resources, and to reinforce the fact that long-term failure is unacceptable. He suggests that districts push for collective bargaining agreements that allow for improving the staff at low-performing schools, including evaluation systems that allow for the timely removal of poor performing teachers. He also believes that school leaders must be able to make radical changes quickly in order to turn around low-performing schools, with high teacher investment in such policies. Lastly, he believes that school districts need to be prepared to establish new schools in order to close the lowest-performing schools over time.
Criticisms are being met with a series of innovations on the state level. In 2007, the top official of the Ohio Department of Education diagnosed that NCLB "paid no attention to whether students below proficient were making strides, or (those) above proficiency." That state is proposing a more subtle "growth model" that would allow schools to better demonstrate progress without jeopardizing past academic accomplishments.
The New York State Department of Education is among a group of state education agencies
that have voiced support for AYP.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
federal No Child Left Behind Act
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a United States Act of Congress concerning the education of children in public schools.NCLB was originally proposed by the administration of George W. Bush immediately after he took office...
that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
and school district
School district
School districts are a form of special-purpose district which serves to operate the local public primary and secondary schools.-United States:...
in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized test
Standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...
s. AYP has been identified as one of the sources of controversy surrounding George W. Bush administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
's Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act , is a United States federal statute enacted April 11, 1965. It was passed as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" and has been the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by Congress...
. Private school
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
s do not have to make AYP.
About
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Sec. 1111 (b)(F), requires that "each state shall establish a timeline for adequate yearly progress. The timeline shall ensure that not later than 12 years after the 2001-2002 school year, all students in each group described in subparagraph (C)(v) will meet or exceed the State's standards." These timelines are developed by state education agenciesState education agency
A state education agency , or state department of education, is a formal governmental label for the state-level government agencies within each U.S...
working under guidance from the federal government.
According to the Department of Education, AYP is a diagnostic tool that determines how schools need to improve and where financial resources should be allocated. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige
Rod Paige
Roderick Raynor "Rod" Paige served as the 7th United States Secretary of Education from 2001 to 2005. Paige, who grew up in Mississippi, built a career on a belief that education equalizes opportunity, moving from classroom teacher to college dean and school superintendent to be the first African...
wrote, "The statute gives States and local educational agencies significant flexibility in how they direct resources and tailor interventions to the needs of individual schools identified for improvement... schools are held accountable for the achievement of all students, not just average student performance."
The No Child Left Behind Act makes provisions for schools that do not demonstrate adequate yearly progress. Those that do not meet AYP for two years in a row are identified as "schools in need of improvement" and are subject to immediate interventions by the State Education Agency
State education agency
A state education agency , or state department of education, is a formal governmental label for the state-level government agencies within each U.S...
in their state. First steps include technical assistance and then, according to the Department of Education, "more serious corrective actions" occur if the school fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress.
Requirements
All kindergarten through twelfth grade schools are required to demonstrate AYP in the areas of readingReading (process)
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning . It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas...
/language arts
Language arts
Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages....
, mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, and either graduation rates, for high schools and districts, or attendance rates for elementary and middle/junior high schools. States are in charge of developing their own criteria for meeting AYP and must submit them for approval. Upon receipt, all criterion provided by the states will be peer reviewed by a panel of people, including representatives, parents, teachers, and state and local educational agencies. After review the states will receive feedback and recommendations from panelists on how to better align their criteria with the statute of No Child Left Behind. These requirements include ten specific guidelines:
1. A single statewide accountability system which is applied to all public schools and local education agencies.
2. The state accountability system must include all public school students.
3. A State's definition of AYP must be based on expectations for growth in student achievement that includes that all students will be proficient in reading and math by 2013-2014.
4. A State must make annual decisions about the achievement of all public schools and local education agencies.
5. All public schools and local education agencies will be held accountable for the achievement of all individual subgroups.
6. A State's definition of AYP must be based primarily on the State's academic assessments.
7. A State's definition of AYP must include graduation rates for high schools, as well as an additional indicator, which may be selected by the states, for middle and elementary schools (such as attendance rates).
8. AYP must be based on reading
Reading (process)
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning . It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas...
/language arts
Language arts
Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages....
and mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
achievement objectives.
9. A State's accountability system must be statistically valid and reliable.
10. To make AYP as a school, a State must ensure that it has assessed at least 95% of students in each subgroup (special education, English language learners, low income, race/ethnicity) enrolled.
Currently, schools are allowed to appeal their AYP findings to their State Education Agency and/or the U.S. Department of Education, if applicable. Appeals have been made in account of standardized test
Standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...
results and data collected by testing companies such as Educational Testing Service
Educational Testing Service
Educational Testing Service , founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization...
.
Assessment
The NCLB Act requires that states use standardized assessmentsStandardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...
in order to measure AYP. These assessments allow State Education Agencies to develop target starting goals for AYP. After those are developed, states must increase student achievement in gradual increments in order for 100 percent of the students to become proficient on state assessments by the 2013-14 school year. The Illinois Department of Education reports, "The NCLB Act is very prescriptive with regard to how this is to be done – very little flexibility is afforded to states. The same process was used to establish starting points for reading and math." Using assessment data from 2002, the U.S. Department of Education determined what specific percentages of students each state is required to make proficient in each subject area. Special considerations were made for students with limited English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
proficiency and individuals with disabilities. Once those percentages were determined, each State Department of Education is required to ensure the standards are the same for each public school, each district, and each subgroup of students, irrespective of differences.
Successful progress
Adequate Yearly Progress requires that every public school completes three requirements annually.Requirements for the percentage of growth is determined on a state-by-state basis. In Illinois those requirements include:
- At least 95 percent of all students are tested for reading and mathematics;
- At least 95 percent of all students meet the minimum annual target for meeting or exceeding standards for reading and mathematics, and;
- At least 95 percent of all students meet the minimum annual target for attendance rate for elementary and middle schools or graduation rate for high schools.
Additionally, state education agencies must determine the yearly progress of districts, and identify districts in need of improvement. Some states, including Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, have lowered standards in order to assure the success of their schools and districts meeting AYP.
Unsuccessful progress
Every state education agency is required to determine which schools do not meet AYP every year. However, a specific designation by the U.S. Department of Education called "Federal school improvement status" applies only to schools that receive Title I funds. State education agencies are required to determine what larger goals are required of every school as they fail to perform annually.If Title I schools do not meet AYP for two consecutive years, they are placed in "Choice" School Improvement Status, which means they must develop an improvement plan, provide students the option to transfer to a different school and provide them transportation to get there, and they must use part of their Title I funds for professional development for their teachers and staff. If a school does not make AYP for three consecutive years, they will be in "Supplemental Services" School Improvement Status, which means that in addition to all the "Choice" requirements above, they must also use some of their Title I funds to support students by providing tutoring or after-school programs from a state-approvded provider. If a school fails AYP for four years in a row they enter "Corrective Action" Improvement Status, where they must provide both "Choice" and "Supplemental Services" as well as choose one of the following: Replace responsible staff, Implement a new curriculum, Decrease a school’s management authority; Appoint an external expert to advise school, or restructure the internal organization of the school. Lastly, if a school fails AYP for 5 years or more, they must plan to and implement one of the following:
- Chartering: Closing and reopening as a public charter school.
- Reconstitution: Replacing school staff, including the principal, relevant to the failure in the school.
- Contracting: contracting with an outside entity to operate the school.
- State takeovers: turning the school operations over to the state education agencyState education agencyA state education agency , or state department of education, is a formal governmental label for the state-level government agencies within each U.S...
. - Any Other major governance restructuring: engaging in another form of major restructuring that makes fundamental reforms.
These "other major governance restructuring" strategies were most popular in restructuring schools in 2007-2008, and allows schools to do a variety of things to improve their schools such as narrow the grade range, re-open as a theme school, close the school, create smaller learning communities, or create their own option that is not provided by the Department of Education.
The option of extending NCLB-required sanctions to non-Title I schools does exist; however, there is little current research indicating the implementation of this practice.
Strategies for improving AYP
State Education Agencies across the United States have developed numerous strategies designed to improve AYP. For instance, steps taken by the Georgia Department of EducationGeorgia Department of Education
The Georgia Department of Education is an American agency that governs public education in the state of Georgia. The department manages funding and testing for local educational agencies accountable for student achievement. The Department is managed by the State Superintendent of Schools, a...
include new and more rigorous curriculum
Curriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
; the placement of "graduation
Graduation
Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony that is sometimes associated, where students become Graduates. Before the graduation, candidates are referred to as Graduands. The date of graduation is often called degree day. The graduation itself is also...
specialists" in each high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
across the state; comprehensive high school redesign focused on rigorous and relevant education, and; integrated technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
throughout learning, including the Georgia Virtual School and a free online SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
prep course.
However, outside critics and analysts continue to make their own suggestions on improvements for Adequate Yearly Progress. One example of this is Robert Manwaring (a Senior Policy Analyst at Education Sector), who has many suggestions at the Federal, State and Local level. On the federal level, Manwaring believes that No Child Left Behind has been too "hands-off" and that states have been avoiding hard choices such as replacing people in failing schools. Moreover, he believes intervention in low-performing districts has been too slow to occur. He believes the key is for the federal government to insist on heavier oversight from the states and to propose shorter timelines for quicker actions to be taken with consistently failing schools. In addition, he believes the federal government should continue to invest in school improvement, but move from a "formula-driven program" to competitive grants, which will reward schools who make drastic improvement in low-performing schools. Moreover, he believes that states should be in charge of approving the "other major restructuring plans" (as discussed above) for schools, in order to ensure that they are the right steps to drastically improve student performance. Lastly, he believes Title I funding "comparability" requirements should be changed to make sure that all Title I schools receive an accurate amount of state and local funding. On the state level, Manwaring believes that states are reluctant to intervene in low-performing schools, and that many state departments lack the experience or capacity to facilitate school turnaround anyway. He suggests that states should identify schools in need of improvement, and require districts to implement an intervention model, during which the state will provide support and monitor progress. In addition, he believes they should take control of charter schools by ensuring effective charter oversight, closing low-performing charter schools and providing a fair amount of funding and facilities to successful charters. And lastly, states should monitor school restructuring closely and be prepared to step in when needed. On the local level, Manwaring believes that since local school districts are closest to the schools, and have the flexibility necessary to act immediately for students, they should change their policies to ensure that schools have an equal amount of resources, and to reinforce the fact that long-term failure is unacceptable. He suggests that districts push for collective bargaining agreements that allow for improving the staff at low-performing schools, including evaluation systems that allow for the timely removal of poor performing teachers. He also believes that school leaders must be able to make radical changes quickly in order to turn around low-performing schools, with high teacher investment in such policies. Lastly, he believes that school districts need to be prepared to establish new schools in order to close the lowest-performing schools over time.
Controversy
Schools across the country are being forced to restructure according to standards dictated by the federal government, rather than local needs. A principal of one such school remarked, "Putting all of the neediest special education students in a few schools seems to create insoluble challenges under No Child Left Behind." Those determinations often come down to the performance of small numbers of students that do not reflect the progress of the whole school.Criticisms are being met with a series of innovations on the state level. In 2007, the top official of the Ohio Department of Education diagnosed that NCLB "paid no attention to whether students below proficient were making strides, or (those) above proficiency." That state is proposing a more subtle "growth model" that would allow schools to better demonstrate progress without jeopardizing past academic accomplishments.
The New York State Department of Education is among a group of state education agencies
State education agency
A state education agency , or state department of education, is a formal governmental label for the state-level government agencies within each U.S...
that have voiced support for AYP.
External links
- Resources on AYP. Education Commission of the States.