Are 82 percent of schools ‘failing’?

Associated Press

President Barack Obama declared this week that four of five public schools could be labeled as “failing” this year under the No Child Left Behind Act if Congress does not take action to rewrite the law.

“That’s an astonishing number,” he said Monday at a Virginia middle school. “We know that four out of five schools in this country aren’t failing.”

Obama’s terminology wasn’t quite right, though. There is no “failing” label in the No Child Left Behind Act. And schools that do not meet growth targets — aimed at getting 100 percent of students proficient in math, reading and science by 2014 — for one year are not subject to any intervention.

Those unable to do so for two or more consecutive years are considered “in need of improvement.”

The consequences then become stiffer each year, starting with offering students an opportunity to attend another school, and escalating if the targets remain unmet.

For those schools, there’s at least the implication of failure, and that’s one reason Obama says the 2001 law needs to be changed.

There are many ways for a school to fall short of its requirements, even if most of its students are improving and succeeding.

A school where all but one group of students are considered proficient in reading, science and math would be lumped into the same category as schools where no students are proficient in those subjects.

The Department of Education says the number of schools that fail to meet the annual proficiency goals could jump from 37 percent to 82 percent this year. That would include schools that have not met the requirements for just one year.

Education experts interviewed by The Associated Press said it was reasonable to expect some increase as the 2014 proficiency deadline nears, but that it’s misleading for the administration to say the law would label all these schools as “failing.”

They also question the magnitude of the projected jump, saying it seems too large.