News-Record.com

A report released this week by the Center on Education Policy shows that many states have chosen to postpone raising the bar on NCLB profiency standards, resulting in dramatically higher—and potentially unreachable—achievement goals beginning with the 2008-09 schools year. Other states, including North Carolina, set incremental goals in an attempt to make steady progress toward the 100 percent profiency targets.

Read the full report here.

Taking incremental steps is not without its own challenges. North Carolina students have struggled in the past to meet the stricter standards the state has set. The Department of Public Instruction is still waiting to hear back from federal officials on a request to not count the reading scores for grades three through eight for Adequate Yearly Progress sanction purposes. You can read the state's rationale in the attached letter (page 3 of the letter).

I talked to Gongshu Zhang, GCS's chief accountability officer, about this a month ago, and he said that he expected fewer schools will make AYP if the federal government doesn't allow the exemption. Zhang, who used to work for DPI, said that the department did not properly prepare educators for the increase in standards (which occur every three years) and so teachers have been discouraged when students perform poorly on the exams. Zhang said he thinks the state should have piloted the increased standards before implementing them state-wide.

Zhang said the percentage point increases in targets, for example, increasing from 76.7 percent in reading to 84.4 percent, appears arbitrary. He suggested increasing by a smaller percentage.

"You must give us solid rationale as to why this amount is scientifically based," he said.

That of course begs the question, how do you meet the federal goal of 100 percent by 2014?