Adequate Yearly Progress


Adequate Yearly Progress was a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allowed the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country was performing academically according to results on standardized tests. As defined by National Council on Measurement in Education, AYP was "the amount of annual achievement growth to be expected by students in a particular school, district, or state in the U.S. federal accountability system, No Child Left Behind." AYP has been identified as one of the sources of controversy surrounding George W. Bush administration's Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Private schools were not required to make AYP.

Description

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Sec. 1111, required 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 will meet or exceed the State's standards." These timelines were developed by state education agencies working under guidance from the federal government. The No Child Left Behind Act was the law used as the primary statute governing the federal government's role in education.
The federal government's role in this area was earlier defined under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The ESEA stated that its purpose was to strengthen and improve educational quality and educational opportunities in the nation's elementary and secondary schools. These goals were to be achieved through financial assistance to local educational agencies for the education of children of low-income families or with disabilities. In 2001, ESEA was modified and renamed the No Child Left Behind Act. To its proponents, the goal of NCLB and the AYP measurement was the strengthening and improvement of the education of elementary and secondary school students.
According to the Department of Education, AYP was a diagnostic tool that determined how schools needed to improve and where financial resources were to 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 NCLB made provisions for schools that did not demonstrate adequate yearly progress. Those that did not meet AYP for two years in a row were identified as "schools in need of improvement" and were subject to immediate interventions by the State Education Agency in their state. First steps included technical assistance and then, according to the Department of Education, "more serious corrective actions" occurred if the school failed to make AYP.

Purpose

The purpose of the No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach. This is ensured through the use of academic assessments, teacher preparation and training, rigorous curriculum and adequate and proper instructional material that will in turn aid in performance on the challenging state academic standards that all students are to meet with proficiency. This process is meant to help meet the educational needs of low-achieving children in the nation's poverty-stricken schools, and have every school performing at a national standard level. If this is achieved, then NCLB is said to have "closed the gap". This means that the achievement gap between high- and low-performing schools and children will be less prominent and all will be achieving at the same level and standard throughout the nation. Thus, there will be no child left behind and no schools identified as "schools in need of improvement".

Details

Requirements

All kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade schools are required to demonstrate AYP in the areas of reading/language arts, mathematics, graduation rates for high schools and districts, and at least one other academic indicator. States are in charge of developing their own criteria for meeting AYP and must submit them for approval. Upon receipt, all criteria provided will be peer reviewed by a panel 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 20132014.
  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 for middle and elementary schools, which may be selected by the states.
  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 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.

Assessment

The NCLB requires that states use standardized assessments 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 201314 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, district and subgroup of students, irrespective of differences.

Successful progress

Adequate Yearly Progress requires that every public school complete three requirements annually. Requirements for the percentage of growth is determined on a state-by-state basis. In Illinois those requirements include:
  1. At least 95 percent of all students are tested for reading and mathematics.
  2. At least 95 percent of all students meet the minimum annual target for meeting or exceeding standards for reading and mathematics.
  3. 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, 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 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-approved 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 the school, or restructure the internal organization of the school. Lastly, if a school fails AYP for five years or more, they must 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 agency
  • 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 20072008, and allow 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.