Conflicting State and Federal Standards for Educational Performance
By Michael Higham | 12/22/2012 | Education, Headline, Issues, Role of Government
Credit: businessweek.com
Student achievement is a priority for educators and the government that oversees its schools. Within the conversation of education standards is the discussion of state and federal roles in evaluating school performance. California and the federal government have two different evaluation methods to determine whether a school is meeting certain standards or not. This has caused confusion at the local level.
California uses the Academic Performance Index (API) to evaluate a school’s performance. API focuses on accounting for relative gains in school performance and serves as a model for growth. An API score is dependent upon performance from previous years, and awards points for improvement. The API is not an individual tracking system that monitors students, but