Kati Haycock:

If there has been unanimous agreement on anything during the process for renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act it is this: School ratings systems should no longer be just about performance on standardized tests.

Indeed, every version of the new law in both the House and Senate has required states to broaden the measures on which schools are evaluated. In looking at high schools, for example, states might also consider the proportions of students completing a full college- and career-preparatory curriculum; the numbers successfully completing Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses; and even results from surveys of parents, educators, and students.

So imagine the surprise of the broad coalition of national civil rights, disabilities, and business organizations when their proposal to require schools to act whenever any group of children is not progressing on a combination of those measures was immediately labeled by the National Education Association as a “preservation of the test and punish culture of No Child Left Behind through a backdoor Adequate Yearly Progress-type (AYP) approach.”