I've been of two minds (or hands) on this. On the one hand, I'm a hard-liner on the various bureaucratic gambits and statistical trap-doors currently being used by state departments of educations to relieve pressure on local school systems to close the achievement gap. They're ridiculous, getting worse, and need to stop.
On the other hand--and this is reluctantly the hand I'm going with--both the article and the subsequent react have an unmistakable (yes, Eduwonk got there first) shocked, shocked air about them that in the long run doesn't help the cause.
The original article plays up the fact that "an Associated Presss computer analysis found..." Wait. A "computer analysis"? As opposed to what, an abacus analysis? Is that supposed to lend the article some kind of super-scientific gravitas? Anyway, the "computer" analysis found that minorities make up the "vast majority of students whose scores are excluded." Well, right. Because the thing about minority students is that there are, you know, fewer of them. If you implement a provision that excludes scores from smaller groups of students, and you base those groups on race/ethnicity, than it's to be expected that smaller racial/ethnic groups will be excluded more.
The react article doesn't add much. Various Congressional leaders pledge to investigate these new revelations of provisions that have been common knowledge for years. The recently-formed Commission on No Child Left Behind issued a press release saying:
"This story by the Associated Press is alarming and, unfortunately, confirmed by much of the Commission's own work. If the goal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is to ensure that all children meet State standards, then allowing large numbers of the most disadvantaged children to fall between the cracks is unacceptable. The issues raised in this article only further reinforce the need to come up with realistic solutions that actually make NCLB a better tool to close the achievement gap. The practices raised in this article have had the effect of making these children invisible and speak to greater transparency over how this law is implemented."
Small point: transparency is arguably the cause of these problems, not the solution. As states have pushed the envelope on adopting large thresholds for excluding minority students from AYP calculations, other states have noticed and followed suit.
Large point: Neither the Commission nor the various allegedly alarmed commentators nor the authors of either article seem especially interested in grappling with the issue of how many minority students should be excluded from AYP calculations. 1.9 million may very well be too high, but the right number isn't zero. Statistically speaking, it doesn't make sense to hold a school accountable for the scores of a tiny number of students, and when you add up tiny numbers from 90,000 schools nationwide, the sum is not so tiny at all.
Moreover, the issue in question--minimum subgroup sizes--is one of a whole range of factors to consider in constructing AYP calculations, including confidence intervals, grade bands, multi-year aggregation, etc. etc. Depending on how you combine these various adjustments, subgroups of different sizes can be appropriate. A small minimum subgroup size with an ultra-permissive 99-percent confidence interval, for example, could exclude more students than a medium-sized minimum subgroup size with no confidence interval. Taking one element of the AYP calculation in isolation oversimplifies the issue to the extreme.
Final point: The most moderate voice on this issue in either story comes from Ross Wiener at the Education Trust:
"The solution may be to set a single federal standard for when minority students' scores don't have to be counted separately, said Ross Wiener, policy director for the Washington-based Education Trust. While the exemptions were created for good reasons, there's little doubt now that group sizes have become political, said Wiener, whose group supports the law."
Tip: There is no organization on the planet more adamant about preserving the role of NCLB in identifying schools that aren't serving poor and minority students than the Education Trust (my former employer). If you find yourself farther out on the edge on these issues than EdTrust, you've crossed the line from serious analysis and commentary and need to turn around and make your way back.
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