Why schools don't make AYP

No Child Left Behind

Why can’t schools make AYP? Let me count the ways.

10. Remove reading and math support teachers from the school because they are making AYP.

9. Remove the assistant principal because they are making AYP.

8. Remove the auxiliary teacher because they are making AYP.

7. Instruct the Special Ed kids only in Corrective Math and Corrective Reading.

6. Insist that the schools have 95% attendance or better, disregarding flu season and inclement weather.

5. Change the structure of the support staff in the central office. Dismantle the offices and department heads for Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, and the Arts. Make all of the new hires generalists and then send them out to a school to counsel the science, math, reading and social studies teachers on how to teach specific topics in their fields of expertise. Require the former reading teacher to give staff development to the math specialists in the region. And vice versa.

4. Test the students every 6-8 weeks to see if they are improving in the achievement scores. Make each test be taken on computers. Allow one week every 6-8 weeks to review all the students’ mistakes, to reteach and retest them so they can pass the next Benchmark test.

3. Increase the disparity of the various school systems by relying on property taxes to fund the schools. In this way, schools in poor neighborhoods are guaranteed less funding for their schools.

2. Rely on this one test and attendance of both staff and students be counted in the AYP equation. Do not take into account that teachers can get pregnant, have operations, catastrophic illnesses, accidents, etc. and have to miss school because of circumstances beyond their control. Count their absences against the school for attendance.

1. Require that the students identified as Special Ed. Perform at or above proficient on their grade level of the State test. Hello? There is a reason why the children are designated as needing Special Ed services! If they carry that designation, then it has been determined that there is something preventing them from performing at grade level and Federal law requires that I teach them at their instructional level, not grade level. Schools who have not made AYP six years in a row are considered failing schools. Why should my school be identified as failing to educate the students when all grades have improved their test scores except for the Special Ed kids?