AYP: All Over the Map

The U.S. Department of Education denied Colorado's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) timeline and told CDE to release the names of the state's "failing" schools earlier than December, as originally agreed. Though some schools were notified, it appears that all were not – of the estimated 800 schools that may not have made AYP.

NCLB's ultimate goal is having all students proficient in reading and math by 2014. ALL STUDENTS. In Colorado, progress toward this goal will be documented as:

• Achieving a 95% participation rate in CSAP;
• Reaching targets for proficiency or for decreasing nonproficiency;
• Reaching targets for one other indicator – an advanced level of performance for elementary and middle schools/junior highs and graduation rates for high schools.

1. The school must have a 95% participation rate and all its subgroups of 30 or more students must have 95% participation. There are six subgroups – racial/ethnic; kids on free and reduced lunch; students with IEPs; and three separate groups of students classified by their English fluency levels.
   A school can use six assessments to find its participation rate: CSAP, CSAP-Alternate, Lectura, Woodcock-Munoz, IPT, and LAS (the last three for students in the U.S. for three or fewer years).
2. If a school doesn't achieve the 95% participation rate, it cannot make AYP.
3. In Colorado, students scoring Partially Proficient, Proficient, or Advanced are considered Proficient in calculating AYP.
4. If a school doesn't reach performance targets in both reading and math, it cannot make AYP.

Estimates are that Colorado has just over 800 schools that did not make AYP, about 46% of all the K-12 public schools in the state. Only about 15 percent of these did not make AYP because their CSAP participation rates were too low (that's good because it means that the student participation rate for CSAP is high).

All schools, all districts, and the state must make AYP under NCLB. If districts or schools don't make it, nothing happens the first year. Districts are forced, under the law, to put their schools that fail to make AYP on School Improvement. In year one of School Improvement, the school must develop an improvement plan and offer parents the opportunity to take their children to other schools. In year two, the school must offer this same opportunity plus supplemental services (e.g., after school tutoring) to parents. In year three, the district has to implement one or more "corrective actions."

If a district doesn't make AYP, the state applies similar measures to the "failing" district, as a district applies to a "failing" school.