The unequal effect of Adequate Yearly Progress: Evidence from school visits

Brown, Abigail, & Clift, Jack W. (2010). The unequal effect of Adequate Yearly Progress: Evidence from school visits. American Educational Research Journal, 47(4), 774-798.

This powerful account of how the concept of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), a “pillar” of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), differentially affects different groups of children was based on extensive interviews with teachers, administrators and parents within actual school contexts. It is an important article because qualitative data were gathered, and effects can be shown with qualitative data (i.e., the words of people directly involved in teaching children) that cannot be shown with quantitative data (i.e., test scores). Even if tests do equate with proficiency (which in itself is questionable), this article demonstrates that there may be unintended negative effects of the incentive system provided by the push for AYP. In fact, the incentive mechanisms in this (perhaps) well-intentioned law may actually thwart educators’ ability to meet that law’s goal of ensuring that ALL children can learn.

The authors organize their points around the notion that there are three distinct groups, all of which react differently to achieving or not achieving AYP: 1) the middle group, schools that either narrowly meet or narrowly miss AYP, 2) the group that falls far short of AYP and has little hope of attaining it, and 3) the group that easily meets AYP. For each group, we get samples of what teachers, administrators, and parents said about the situation, and the result is, in my view, a shocking indictment of NCLB. The only voices not heard were those of the children. Though I recognize the ethical challenges of gathering data from minors, I would have liked to have heard their voices, and also even more of what the adults had to say. This article, which echoes the words I myself have heard from teachers, administrators, and parents about AYP during my own extensive experiences in urban schools over the last decade, left me wanting to hear more. It is clear that each group has displayed negative consequences of AYP. In the middle group, the most damning finding was evidence of widespread educational “triage”, where the primary focus of interventions is given to children who are “on the edge” of succeeding, and children farther above and below the cut scores receive less attention. Such triage also affects curriculum, causing a focus on topics and subjects that are tested and can be quickly improved to the exclusion of other topics and subjects, thus narrowing the curriculum and often focusing on low-level, easily tested outcomes in reading and math only. The group far below AYP is subjected to blame, shame, and hopelessness, and the authors observed a kind of panic, with interventions being tried and abandoned and switched before benefits could accrue. The low morale, sense of uncertainty, and low expectations in this group were almost palpable, and this was the saddest story of all. Rivaling it, however, was the complacency that was observed in the schools that achieved AYP, and the fear, defensiveness, and outright racism that was sometimes displayed when these adults, whose children attended affluent white schools, expressed their trepidation about choice laws which they feared would ruin the advantages they had accrued for their children. This was at times a painful article to read, but an important one, and if the lessons here are heeded, needed changes might come about.