With Washington mired in a blizzard, could a debate about AYP heat things up? (Education Week)
Why do school administrators hate snow? Because no matter what they do, they can’t win. (DC Schools Insider)
So what if schools ran their own Super Bowl? (Flypaper)
Ever wonder why the DC area goes nuts over snow? Watch this weatherman. [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'AYP'
QUICK Hits – Snow.M.G. Edition
QUICK Hits
Will “adequate yearly progress” morph into “college- and career-ready” in the next ESEA reauth? (Politics K-12)
Can graduation rates help future college-goers — especially minority students — make better decisions about where to attend school? Ed Trust says yes. (Education Trust)
Remember the competitive spirit unleashed from being graded on “the curve” back in your schooldays? Well now the [...]
Think Positive
You get more flies with honey than vinegar. In Psychology 101 you learn that people are more responsive to positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement or punishment. While both positive incentives and punishment can be effective at modifying behavior, punishment tends to lead to other negative responses like anger and resentment. Yet, much of our current [...]
The Growth in Growth
Prior to the 2005-2006 school year, schools around the country were required to count how many students in each school were “proficient” to determine whether a school made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). That year, two states, Tennessee and North Carolina, began the Growth Model Pilot program to allow schools to meet AYP another way, by [...]
Seven Percent
When the media report the number of schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), they generally report things like, “xxx number of schools failed this year under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.” This does a real disservice on lots of fronts. One, it belies the fact that states set their own [...]
Margins of Error
Kevin Drum wrote a good post a couple of weeks ago about statistical illiteracy in the media, viz. the widespread tendency to characterize election poll results in which one candidate’s percentage point lead is equal to or less than the poll’s statistical margin of error (MOE) as a “statistical tie” or “dead heat.” Kevin notes:
…probability [...]
Viva Las Vegas
I did a radio interview with KNPR today (the “N” actually stands for “Nevada” and was issued a long time ago, well before they knew what a great call sign that would turn out to be) focused on the Clark County (Las Vegas) school district’s latest results under NCLB. Here’s the beginning of the story [...]
differentiated accountability proposals
In response to Secretary Spellings’ March 2008 call for differentiated accountability proposals, 17 states submitted plans. The Department forwarded all 17 plans to a peer review committee, which will comment on them in mid-June before a final decision by the Secretary. Up to ten state plans may be approved. I’ve had a chance to review [...]
Maybe I’m Being Too Nice
The Pangloss Index isn’t the first report I’ve written criticizing state implementation of NCLB (here’s one from a few years back focused on the teacher quality provisions), and when I talk to the press–particularly at the state level–I usually get some variant on the question, “If this is so bad, why are people doing it?”
As [...]
Leaving Birmingham Behind
People have their differences of opinion about No Child Left Behind, but even the law’s supporters would concede that it sets extremely ambitious goals for improvement. NCLB requires states to establish a series of escalating performance targets for schools and districts, rising from wherever they were when the law was enacted in 2002 to 100 [...]
What You Should Think About the New Version of No Child Left Behind
The House Education and Labor Committee released a discussion draft of a new version of the No Child Left Behind Act this week. It’s an important milestone, being the first concrete proposal from one of the committee chairmen who will ultimately write the law. Overall, it goes a long way in addressing the single biggest [...]
AFT: He Who is Not the Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy, Or Something.
AFTie Ed faults Education Sector’s new Connecting the Dots about the Walton Family Foundation’s support of the charter school movement for not being what it isn’t–a report about Wal-Mart’s anti-union activities. Why? Because, says Ed:
Wal-Mart attacks unions and those workers who want to form one. There is no reason to see their support for charter [...]
Rothstein, Concluded
Richard Rothstein recently posted a lengthy essay at the Economic Policy Institute Web site responding to various critics–most prominantly Checker Finn–who’ve been writing in recent weeks about his views on race, class, and educational achievement. I’ve blogged overmuch on this topic, but I’m going to go back to the well one more time, because the [...]
Curdled Cheese, Continued
Last Friday, the Commission on No Child Left Behind met in Madison, Wisconsin to discuss “how NCLB is impacting schools which are academically struggling (not making AYP).” The subject was worthy but the choice of venue strange, given that last year Wisconsin, through a series of statistical manipulations, identified fewer schools (on a percentage basis) [...]
N Size Fits All
Monday’s AP story about minority students being excluded from NCLB accountability calculations has generated enough commotion among legislators and commentators to warrant…another AP story, about said commotion.
I’ve been of two minds (or hands) on this. On the one hand, I’m a hard-liner on the various bureaucratic gambits and statistical trap-doors currently being used by state [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.