Thompson: Accountability, the Spinmeisters' Quest
Jack Jennings is right, "If there's one thing that causes anger on the part of teachers, its AYP" .., (we) "think it's arbitrary and an unfair way to measure how schools are doing. The question is, will the replacement be better?" My state’s AYP was based on API, an algorithm used for ½ of California’s system (the adjustment for socio-economics had already been dropped as impractical, partially because it could not account for the proliferation of choice) which was designed for another purpose (awarding incentives). It was further based on the lowest common denominator testing system of Texas. We explicitly patterned our rules on Ohio’s because that state’s political importance meant that they would get the maximum number of loopholes. This time we were told, the Feds were really serious and our only hope was a rebellion by Republican governors. NCLB was a "Pass Fail" system and schools that did not improve dramatically would have to replace the name on their marque.Ironically, the only metric that proved relevant for my school was "Safe Harbor," which was a way of saying that we were just kidding about 100% proficiency. Even though my school only had two students who passed the Math EOI, (1%) the statistical engineering gave us an API of 648 out of 1500. Six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, after cut scores were reduced, we made Safe Harbor with 13 passes and an Math API of 932 and a total API of 594. Last year we were