The Core Knowledge Blog points out that as the performance equivalent of a mortgage balloon payment kicks in, which requires all testing subgroups to make a sudden leap in test scores, many schools in California aren’t able to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Robert Pondiscio hits the nail on the head in predicting: “Expect to hear this story over and over and over again.” He notes how even successful California schools are having trouble making AYP.
A quarter of California’s students are ELLs, and that’s a group that often presents a challenge for schools in making AYP. This Week in Education picks up today on a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Growing Number of English Learners in County Threatens Pass-Rate Progress,” that tells a similar story as the Oct. 12 article the Core Knowledge Blog posts from the New York Times.
As I’ve pointed out several times on this blog, on average schools aren’t making adequate yearly progress for English-language learners. In the 2005-06 school year, the most recent year for which state-by-state data concerning ELLs has been evaluated by the U.S. Department of Education, Louisiana was the only state that made AYP for ELLs in math. No state made AYP on average for ELLs in reading that school year.