DES MOINES – More Iowa schools and districts missed Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) state targets for test participation and proficiency in reading and mathematics in the 2011-12 school year, according to the 2012 State Report Card for No Child Left Behind released Friday by the Iowa Department of Education. The number of schools and districts identified as “in need of assistance” based on performance in the 2011-12 school year also climbed.
The results are linked to higher expectations set by the Iowa Core standards, the state’s comprehensive roadmap for what K-12 students should learn in school. A new version of the state assessment that Iowa students took in the 2011-12 school year was more challenging because it was aligned with the Iowa Core standards, Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass said.
“Student achievement will be stronger in the long run as our state assessments evolve to match our standards, which have been raised to better prepare students for the demands of our globally competitive marketplace,” Glass said.
However, Glass expressed concern that the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 holds schools to unrealistic measures and then labels those that fall short as failing. The Iowa Department of Education will continue to seek permanent relief from the law, he said.
“We expect our schools to meet high standards, but we need an approach that focuses on student growth and progress in addition to proficiency on tests,” Glass said. “Either reauthorization of No Child Left Behind must become a priority at the federal level, or our state legislature must give the Iowa the ability to receive a federal waiver from No Child Left Behind, which would allow us to develop a rigorous accountability system that makes sense for our state.”
Last month, the executive directors of the Iowa Association of School Boards, the Iowa State Education Association, the School Administrators of Iowa, and the Iowa Department of Education sent a joint letter to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa offering a set of principles for revising the No Child Left Behind Act as Congress considers the reauthorization of the law.
No Child Left Behind requires public schools and districts to meet state AYP target increases for the overall student population and for demographic subgroups in grades 3-8 and grade 11. These subgroups include socio-economic status, limited English proficiency, race/ethnicity and special education.
Schools must meet all targets in every student group to meet AYP and must test 95 percent of students in each group.
The U.S. Department of Education has put in place regular target increases to ensure schools meet the No Child Left Behind requirement that 100 percent of students meet grade-level standards in reading and mathematics by 2014.
Targets for the 2011-12 school year did not increase in Iowa because the state requested and received a one-year freeze in June, shortly after the U.S. Department of Education turned down Iowa’s application from a waiver from certain requirements of No Child Left Behind.
The targets vary by grade level and subject, but in most cases they are set at about 80 percent and would have increased by about 7 percent had Iowa’s request for short-term relief been denied.
“Without this temporary relief, we would have seen an even higher number of schools and districts miss AYP,” Glass said.
Results from the State Report Card show 800 of 1,381 public schools (58 percent) missed AYP, up from 37.4 percent of schools that fell short the previous year. Sixty-one out of 351 school districts (17 percent) missed AYP in 2011-12, up from 11 percent of districts that fell short the previous year.
No Child Left Behind includes consequences for Title I public schools that consistently do not meet AYP state targets for test participation and proficiency. Schools and districts that do not meet targets in either the “all students” group or any one of the demographic subgroups within the required grade spans in reading or mathematics for two consecutive years are identified as “in need of assistance.” Schools and districts that do not meet goals for average daily attendance rate and high school graduation rate for two consecutive years also are identified as “in need of assistance.” Districts and schools remain “in need of assistance” until they have met AYP for two consecutive years.
Based on 2011-12 performance, 28 of 351 school districts (8 percent) were identified as districts in need of assistance for the 2012-13 school year, down slightly from 8.4 percent identified the previous year. A total of 496 out of 1,381 public schools (35.9 percent) were identified as schools in need of assistance for the 2012-13 school year, up from 29.6 percent identified the previous year.
The stages of “in need of assistance” status can be found under the SINA and DINA Timelines at: http://educateiowa.gov/index.php?option=com_content&;;view=article&id=1923&Itemid=2941
The 2012 State Report Card and report cards from previous years are available at: http://www.educateiowa.gov/index.php?option=com_docman&;;task=cat_view&gid=670&Itemid=4434
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I must agree with others here, parents are key to education. They must motivate, and drive their children to excel. Without it, the kids may as well apply for ditch diggers jobs in 6th grade.
If they just drop them off at school, and are not an active part of the process, they are more palpable than the Districts.
Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do — babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning — that equals 6-1/2 hours). So each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day.
However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE….
That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6-1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!
The average teacher’s salary (nationwide) is $50,000.
$50,000/180 days = $277.77 per day / 30 students = $9.25 / 6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student — a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!
You can’t blame it all on teachers. That’s the problem with our society everyone blames one another instead of working together. I can remember when I was a kid my parents sat down and helped me with my homework. They made me read every night. They made me practice my spelling words. Parents all so need to be held accountable.
Americans always blame someone else for not doing what they should be doing.They all want to be their kids best friend instesd of the parent. If the teacher haters had to be in a room with 30 spoiled brats everyday they would beg the teachers to keep up the good work.
Great comeback md. I totally agree with you. If those who feel teachers are paid too much would have to abide by the same rules as teachers do, then they might not be so quick to judge. When talking of declining test scores, AYP’s not being met, they don’t mention that the standards set include all students in a grade level. That reaching 100% of a goal is darn near impossible when you have to count students who attend 2 or 3 times a week, and whose parents could care less as long as they aren’t held accountable for their young ones. And I am sure we are going to hear from those people shortly.
@md: Great post. Parents are the key here. If they don’t motivate their children to excel, they will sputter and stall. Until parents realize their own failure to take advantage of a free education has put them at a disadvantage in life, they will likely not motivate their children to do better than they did. It’s a vicious cycle of educational failure unless there is intervention by a teacher who is able to light a spark in the children and other teachers can keep the flame burning.
I know how to fix this-we will just give the teachers and administrators a big raise in salary for their substandard performance. It won’t matter because our kids won’t be capable of reading the reports anyway.
How about we give the parents a check for letting their kids run around town all night when they should be home doing home work. If the teachers are so bad home school your kids if you think you can do a better job.
How about putting LVS in charge of them? Always a critic, never a solution other than something negative.