Examining Kentucky's No Child Left Behind Tier 5 Schools -- 2009 Update
The Bluegrass Institute released a report, "Examining Kentucky's No Child Left Behind Tier 5 Schools" in August 2009. This report examined performance in Kentucky's poorest performing schools under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) assessment program.
One month later, on September 23, 2009 the Kentucky Department of Education released the 2009 NCLB results for all Kentucky public schools. This graph shows some performance and status changes for the 34 schools that were in Tier 5 status in 2008:
Here are some of the major changes for these schools:
1) Twenty-seven schools again failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals in 2009 and have advanced in the Tier 5 listings to at least Tier 5, Year 2 status, or higher.
2) Of those 27 schools, 18 failed a larger percent of their NCLB targets in 2009 than they did in 2008. Numbers in the Change - 2009 Minus 2008 Percent of NCLB Targets Met column for these schools are in red.
3) Of the other nine schools among that group of 27, only four increased the number of targets met.
4) One school met all of its AYP goals but remains in Tier 5 status because it takes two years of satisfactory NCLB performance to exit the Tier program.
5) Six schools -- names shown in red -- were removed from the Tier program solely due to changes in the enrolled students in the school that exceeded 20 percent of the schools' enrollment. All of these schools get to start all over in NCLB even though there was academic success in 2009 in only one of the six schools.
6) Four of the six schools that got a non-academic improvement removal from NCLB Tier status are in Jefferson County. It appears a federal court ordered busing plan created the large changes in student enrollment that triggered this 'No Child' "Get out of Jail Free Card" situation.
In essence, among the 34 Tier 5 schools from 2008, not a single school exited NCLB due to two satisfactory years of academic performance. The vast majority of the schools slid further down the NCLB slope.
