If there is a cell of data and members of that data cell don't show some minimum level of academic improvement this year over last year's test scores, the cell doesn't make AYP. If a cell - any ONE, single cell - doesn't make AYP, the whole school doesn't make AYP. Bad dog (or school, in this case); no biscuit!
Disaggregate data is the reason that school principals need yoga (or some other form of stress relief).
Among the biggest culprits in this data war when it comes to schools not making AYP: special education. Meeting AYP is much less likely than in a school where there are enough special education students to meet the minimum number needed to form a cell than in a school where there aren't enough special education students to make a cell.
That's controversial for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is the question of whether (or to what extent) special education students should be counted in academic achievement test data. Are such tests meaningful measures of whether a mentally impaired student is getting an appropriate education? Should schools be expected to make the same sort of progress year over year with students who have learning disabilities as with regular education students? The law (NCLB) says a clear "yes" to both questions; the education community is less certain.
More controversial, though, is a technical provision in the law that allows individual states to decide how many students it takes to make a data cell. Education Week ran a story earlier this month on how some states have found a solution to the Special Education-AYP problem: larger cell sizes. A handful of states have decided to set the number of students required to have a special education cell in a school disaggregate data at a high enough number to make it unlikely for such a cell to exist. And (surprise, surprise) in those states, more schools make AYP. A few examples, according to the Education Week feature:
- Ohio, where 96 percent of schools DON'T have a special education cell
- California, where 92 percent of schools don't have a special education cell
- West Virginia, where 80 percent of schools DON'T have a special education cell
- Georgia, where 57 percent of schools don't have a special education cell
- Florida, where 42 percent of schools DON'T have a special education cell
Some 22 states set their minimum number for making a subgroup at 40 or more. In most states the number is 20 or less. And the higher the number, the more schools in the state that succeed in making AYP.
