DES MOINES – More Iowa schools and districts were identified as “in need of assistance” under the federal No Child Left Behind law based on student performance on state tests taken during the 2013-14 school year, according to the 2014 State Report Card for No Child Left Behind released Tuesday by the Iowa Department of Education.
The results say more about the arbitrary accountability system under No Child Left Behind than it does about the work under way in Iowa classrooms, Director Brad Buck said.
“No Child Left Behind has outlived its usefulness as a lever for improving student achievement in our country,” Buck said. “We need some different solutions. In Iowa, we embrace high expectations and accountability, but we must have an approach that dignifies growth and progress as much as proficiency on a test.”
While most states have obtained a waiver from key components of No Child Left Behind, Iowa must continue to follow the federal law unless it is reauthorized by Congress or Iowa’s system for educator evaluation is changed by state legislators to meet waiver criteria.
“I continue to fully support Congressional reauthorization, which is long overdue, as well as a significant overhaul of this law,” Buck said. “We want a rigorous system that both acknowledges growth and holds schools and districts accountable without labeling schools that fall short of proficiency targets as failures.”
Adequate Yearly Progress Results
No Child Left Behind requires public schools and districts to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) state targets for the overall student population and for demographic subgroups of students in grades 3-8 and 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. This means that an entire school can miss AYP based on the performance of a few students.
The U.S. Department of Education put in place regular target increases so that the percentage of students required to meet grade-level standards in reading and mathematics climbed each year. In Iowa, the target proficiency rate climbed from 80 percent in 2011-12 to 94 percent in 2012-13 to 100 percent in 2013-14.
The AYP calculation takes some elements of growth into account, so it should not be assumed that schools and districts that met AYP for 2013-14 had 100 percent of students demonstrating proficiency, Buck said.
But the focus on growth doesn’t go far enough, Buck said.
For example, Iowa saw overall high gains in proficiency at the middle-school level in reading and math from 2012-13 to 2013-14. The Department will work with the state assessment provider and school districts that saw the largest gains to find out more about what drove the increases.
“We know that school districts are working hard and are focused on the right work to raise student achievement,” Buck said.
Today’s AYP results should not be compared to the previous year’s results because they do not include about 5 percent of Iowa schools that obtained a one-year waiver from No Child Left Behind, Buck said. The one-time waiver was offered by the U.S. Department of Education to schools that opted to field test a different assessment in the 2013-14 school year.
Results from the State Report Card show 852 of 1,288 public schools (66.1 percent) missed AYP for test participation or proficiency in reading and mathematics in the 2013-14 school year. Sixty-one of 346 school districts missed AYP in 2013-14.
Schools and Districts “In Need of Assistance”
Schools and districts that do not meet AYP targets in either the “all students” group or any one of the demographic subgroups within the required grade spans in reading or math for two years in a row 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 2013-14 performance, 737 of Iowa’s 1,356 public schools (54.4 percent) were identified as “in need of assistance” for the 2014-15 school year. This is an increase from the 47.2 percent that were identified as schools in need of assistance the year before. A total of 45 out of 346 school districts (13 percent) were identified as districts in need of assistance for the 2014-15 school year, up from the 11.8 percent of districts identified the year before.
Public schools that receive federal Title I funding and are identified as “in need of assistance” face consequences under No Child Left Behind. The consequences associated with various stages of “in need of assistance” are available on the Iowa Department of Education’s
Guidance for Schools and Districts in Need of Assistance (SINA/DINA) webpage (the files are marked “SINA and DINA Timelines”).
Read The State Report Card for No Child Left Behind, 2013-2014.
