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In several posts, I've complained about how, in our public discourse, we misinterpret changes in proficiency rates (or actual test scores) as "gains" or "progress," when they actually represent cohort changes-that is, they are performance snapshots for different groups of students who are potentially quite dissimilar.

State Secretary of Education Melody Schopp announced via conference call to superintendents today that South Dakota will hold its goals for proficiency in reading and math at 2009-10 levels, rather than bumping up those targets as previously anticipated. In addition, the state will reduce its graduation rate goal to 80 percent from the current target of 85 percent.

In the new state regulations for evaluation of educators, approved on June 28, one of the three measures that will be used to evaluate teachers includes "state-wide growth measure(s) where applicable, including MCAS Student Growth Percentile and Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA)."

"The attitude was if we did good teaching and we were passionate and energetic, kids would learn and that would be enough," said Ms. Rief, who is 67. No more. Last year, the No Child Left Behind law, which calls for 100 percent proficiency by 2014, caught up with Oyster River. Under the law's mandates for adequate yearly progress toward that goal, the school was one of 326 public schools in New Hampshire - 69 percent of the total - deemed to be failing.

The DRA is a test that very few students take because it is given only in schools that don't go above second grade. In all other elementary schools, the state uses the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), a series of reading, writing, math and science tests used by Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermomt and Maine. Those tests start in grade 3. Last year, only 6 of the state's 168 elementary schools took the DRA, which makes Blackstone Valley Prep a big fish in a very small pond. "There are a lot of schools that are high-performing that don't take this test," said Krieger.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) wants to insure that every teacher in the U.S. is evaluated on the basis on student progress on high-stakes achievement tests. To achieve this, the DOE will issues waivers on some aspects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in exchange for a state-wide system to evaluate teachers using tests. In this post I provide details and opinions on this development.

A new report, commissioned by the District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray and conducted by the Chicago-based consulting organization IFF, was supposed to provide guidance on how the District might act and invest strategically in school improvement, including optimizing the distribution of students across schools, many of which are either over- or under-enrolled. Needless to say, this is a monumental task. Not only does it entail the identification of high- and low-performing schools, but plans for improving them as well. Even the most rigorous efforts to achieve these goals, especially in a large city like D.C., would be to some degree speculative and error-prone. This is not a rigorous effort. IFF's final report is polished and attractive, with lovely maps and color-coded tables presenting a lot of summary statistics. But there's no emperor underneath those clothes. The report's data and analysis are so deeply flawed that its (rather non-specific) recommendations should not be taken seriously.

If want to read something that will make you gasp out loud, check out the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit filed last week against Michigan's Highland Park School District and the state entities that support it. ACLU sued the district and the state for failing to teach kids in the Detroit-area district to read.

"The nation's largest charter management organization is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). KIPP schools are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and a focus on traditional reading and math skills. No Excuses charter schools are sometimes said to focus on relatively motivated high achievers at the expense of students who are most diffiult to teach, including limited English proficiency (LEP) and special education (SPED) students, as well as students with low baseline achievement levels. We use applicant lotteries to evaluate the impact of KIPP Academy Lynn, a KIPP school in Lynn, Massachusetts that typifies the KIPP approach. Our analysis focuses on special needs students that may be underserved. The results show average achievement gains of 0.36 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn, with the largest gains coming from the LEP, SPED, and low-achievement groups. The average reading gains are driven almost completely by SPED and LEP students, whose reading scores rise by roughly 0.35 standard deviations for each year spent at KIPP Lynn."

Variation and Change in State Standards for Reading and Mathematics, 2005-2009