Federal Rule Changes Proposed for Graduation, Testing and More

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School districts would face a series of changes to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act under modifications proposed by the U.S. Department of Education in April. The department contends that their proposals would "clarify and strengthen current Title I regulations in the areas of assessment, accountability, supplemental educational services, and public school choice."

The proposed rules would:

• establish a uniform definition of graduation by 2012-13;

• require states to explain their subgroup sizes when defining adequate yearly progress (AYP);

• require states and school districts to report the results of their NAEP reading and math assessments on the same public report card as their state assessments;

• create a National Technical Advisory Council to advise the secretary on state standards, assessments and accountability standards;

• limit identification for improvement by subject or subgroup;

• clarify that restructuring interventions must be more rigorous than corrective action, and the interventions must address the problem; and

• require state and school districts to take greater steps to ensure that supplemental educational services and public school choice are utilized.

• The department also appears to be more willing to look at growth models and individual student progress.

The rules would:

• clarify that measures of student achievement may include multiple-question formats that range in cognitive complexity within a single assessment; and

• allow states to include accurate measures of individual student academic progress in AYP calculations using the criteria that are part of the current "growth model" pilot programs.

• The uniform definition of graduation requirement has garnered the most attention. The department is proposing to define it as "the number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for that graduation class." The proposed definition is based on the definition agreed to by the National Governors Association in 2005. Vermont practice is already aligned with the NGA standards.

• Proponents of NCLB have contended that the current system of allowing each state to establish its own definition of graduation has resulted in states understating the number of high school drop outs. According to a recent report by the non-profit Editorial Projects in Education, Vermont had the fifth-highest graduation rate in the country in 2005 (just over 80% of our students graduated within four years).

Portions of this article are reprinted from the Wisconsin Association of School Board’s May newsletter.

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