Reformers, please listen to what parents want for schools

By Helen Gym, Special to CNN June 8, 2011

Editor’s note: Helen Gym is a Philadelphia public school parent and writer and founder of Parents United for Public Education, which seeks classroom-centered investments in education budgets. She is a board member of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, where she contributes online commentary. She helped found the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School in Philadelphia Chinatown and was named the Philadelphia Inquirer Citizen of the Year for 2007 for education activism.

Philadelphia (CNN) — Many of those who are driving education policy today are fixed on a certain set of numbers and measurements that we’re told are the way to gauge a quality school. But as a parent, that’s not really what matters to me about my daughter’s education.

I can’t tell you the number of her standardized test score from last year. I can’t tell you the name of the curriculum program her school uses for math and reading. I don’t know the pay scale of each of her teachers and whether that contributes to their malaise or enthusiasm in the classroom.

But here’s what I can tell you about my daughter’s education.

I can tell you the name of the history teacher who inspired her this year, the book that she loved and couldn’t stop talking about and the topic of the reflective essay she labored to write and rewrite.

I can tell you which teachers gave homework assignments that made some of our family evenings perfectly miserable and the community service projects that had our whole family out cleaning the streets or readying a garden.

I can tell you what it felt like when the principal of a school shrugged her shoulders after I complained my daughter had been pushed down the stairs (we left that school) and what it felt like when the new principal stood outside greeting children by name as they entered every morning.

I can tell you that my mother cried when my youngest daughter’s school choir sang “Arirang,” a traditional Korean song, and that I loved every squeak and clank of the school orchestra.

I can tell you all of these things because as a parent, the true meaning of a quality school lies in a strong child- and family-centered educational mission that recognizes education as a “process of living” and school life as “real and vital” to our children and families, as American philosopher John Dewey wrote more than half a century ago.

This is what matters to me, but it’s apparently not a priority when it comes to national debates about education reform. For many parents, the elements of what makes a quality school seem completely at odds with the national buzz about education reform:

– While parents talk about programs rich in the arts, sciences and history, politicians talk about covering the basics through a one-size-fits-all curricula.

– While we talk about building critical thinkers and creative problem-solvers for a complicated and dynamic world, they talk about hiring billion-dollar testing companies that infiltrate every aspect of teaching and learning, drilling the notion of knowledge down to a single test score.

– While we talk about smaller class sizes to help students and teachers build nurturing relationships with one another, they talk about maximizing capacity and “creating efficiencies.”

– While we talk about building an experienced, stable and professional teaching force where teachers are prepared with a depth of knowledge in their subject areas and are committed to the profession, others talk about relying on a temporary teaching force or focusing on education managers.

– While we talk about sustainable change based upon policies that have been proved to work, politicians and the private sector demand dramatic and disruptive changes that do little to significantly improve children’s educational experiences.

And in this lies the critical difference between what many parents see as their hopes for a quality school system and the politicians and billionaire venture philanthropists dominating the education reform landscape. The latter have become so enamored with the structure and management of education that they’ve forgotten about the substance and practice of it.

So if this is what’s meaningful to parents and families, how can policymakers help to support those goals?

They can start by listening to what parents around the country are saying we need our elected officials to do. Parents Across America, a national organization of parents, recently released its own blueprint for school reform.

Among the suggestions: Address the dramatic inequity in resources within and among school districts so we can maintain smaller class sizes and early childhood programs. Create strong, effective support for teachers, provide a rich well-rounded curriculum, and create multiple ways to evaluate teaching and learning. Make parental involvement meaningful and include roles for governance.

In her book “The Next American Revolution,” Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs decries a system of education that views children as passive receptacles of information that routinely passes as knowledge. Instead, she challenges us to give our children the kind of education that creates tomorrow’s leaders by unleashing their creative energy “to heal the Earth and build durable economies and communities,” “create a vibrant society” and a “democratic citizenry.”

This is the direction our nation should be moving in, with elected leaders working alongside parents and community members to truly transform our schools.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Helen Gym.

Respected Teacher Commits Suicide Following LA Times Published Ratings of All Los Angeles Public School Teachers

Rigoberto Ruelas was rated “less effective than average” by the school district. This was published in the Los Angeles Times.

Teacher’s Death Exposes Tensions in Los Angeles

By IAN LOVETT Published: November 9, 2010 NYTimes

LOS ANGELES — Colleagues of Rigoberto Ruelas were alarmed when he failed to show up for work one day in September. They described him as a devoted teacher who tutored students before school, stayed with them after and, on weekends, took students from his South Los Angeles elementary school to the beach.

When his body was found in a ravine in the Angeles National Forest, and the coroner ruled it a suicide, Mr. Ruelas’s death became a flash point, drawing the city’s largest newspaper into the middle of the debate over reforming the nation’s second-largest school district.

When The Los Angeles Times released a database of “value-added analysis” of every teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District in August, Mr. Ruelas was rated “less effective than average.” Colleagues said he became noticeably depressed, and family members have guessed that the rating contributed to his death.

On Monday, a couple hundred people marched to the Los Angeles Times building, where they waved signs and chanted, demanding that the newspaper remove Mr. Ruelas’s name from the online database.

“Who got the ‘F’? L.A. Times,” chanted the crowd, which was made up mostly of students, teachers and parents from Miramonte Elementary School, where Mr. Ruelas taught fifth grade.

The value-added assessments of teachers — which use improvements in student test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness — has grown in popularity across the country with support from the federal Department of Education, which has tied teacher evaluations to the Race to the Top state-grant program.

But their use remains controversial. Teachers’ unions argue that the method is unfair and incomplete and have fought its implementation across the country.

The Los Angeles Times compiled its database using seven years of standardized test scores obtained through a public records request.

A. J. Duffy, president of the union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which helped organize Monday’s event, held up Mr. Ruelas as an example of the problems with value-added assessments.

“Value-added assessments are a flawed system,” Mr. Duffy said. “This was a great teacher who gave a lot to the community.”

The newspaper has refrained from commenting on the issue beyond a statement issued after Mr. Ruelas’s death: “The Times continues to extend our sympathy to Mr. Ruelas’s family, students, friends and colleagues. The Times published the database, which is based on seven years of state test scores in the L.A.U.S.D. schools, because it bears directly on the performance of public employees who provide an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to judge the data for themselves.”

Teachers’ unions have largely opposed moves away from the tenure system, in which layoffs are based on seniority, not performance.

Recently, in Washington, where the school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, used comprehensive teacher evaluations to fire hundreds of “ineffective” teachers, their unions poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign to unseat her main supporter, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Mr. Fenty lost the Democratic primary in September, and Ms. Rhee resigned the next month.

Despite opposition from the teachers union, Education Secretary Arne Duncan came out in support of greater transparency in teacher evaluations, and the New York City Department of Education is also preparing to release data reports on its teachers, pending the result of a court hearing later this month.

In Los Angeles, where the school district has moved toward significant reforms, like handing control of some chronically low-performing campuses to charter school operators, members of the school board have increasingly pushed to implement value-added assessments.

“Not including value-added measures is not acceptable,” said Yolie Flores, a board member of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “But it also has to be part of a more comprehensive system of evaluation.”

Eric A. Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who studies school accountability systems, said the value-added assessments should be combined with other factors. But he said the tenure system did not offer any meaningful evaluation of teacher performance.

“Now that The L.A. Times has published these scores, I think the genie is out of the bottle, and parents are going to want this information,” Mr. Hanushek said. “I presume the union’s opposition is a last effort of the teachers’ union to say that you should never evaluate teachers. This is their attempt to take a tragic situation and turn it into one that they can use for their own political advantage.”

But Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, argued that reliance on value-added assessments actually hindered efforts to carry out comprehensive teacher evaluations.

“Our union has proposed a comprehensive system of teacher evaluation that more than 50 districts have adopted,” Ms. Weingarten said. “The good work we’re doing trying to make comprehensive teacher evaluations will actually be hurt by this fixation on a value-added system.”

Ravitch on how wrong ‘Superman’ really is

This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch on her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website.

Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement.

Dear Deborah,
I reviewed “Waiting for ‘Superman’” for The New York Review of Books. I thought the movie was very slick, very professional, and very propagandistic. It is one-sided and very contemptuous of public education. Notably, the film portrayed not a single successful regular public school, and its heroic institutions were all charter schools.

There are many inaccuracies in the movie.

One that I describe in my review is Davis Guggenheim’s claim that 70 percent of 8th grade students read “below grade level.” He has a graphic where state after state is shown to have only a small proportion of students reading “on grade level” or “proficient.” The numbers are based on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

But Guggenheim is wrong. NAEP doesn’t report grade levels. It reports achievement levels, and these do not correspond to grade levels. Nor does he understand the NAEP achievement levels or just how demanding NAEP’s “proficiency” level really is. To score below “proficient” on NAEP does NOT mean “below grade level.”

NAEP has four achievement levels.

The top level is called “advanced,” which represents the very highest level of student performance. Students who are “advanced” probably are at an A+; if they were taking an SAT, they would likely score somewhere akin to 750-800. These are the students who are likely to qualify for admission to our most selective universities.

Then comes “proficient,” which represents solid academic performance, equivalent to an A or a very strong B. Guggenheim assumes that any student who is below “proficient” cannot read at “grade level.” He is wrong.

The third level is “basic.” These are students who have achieved partial mastery of the knowledge and skills necessary to be proficient. This would be equivalent, I believe, to a grade of C. Many (if not most) states use NAEP’s “basic” as their own definition of “proficient.” This is because they know that it is unrealistic to expect all students to be “A” students.

“Below basic” is the category that appears to be what Guggenheim means by his reference to “below grade level.” But in 8th grade reading, 25 percent of students are below basic, not 70 percent\

\If Guggenheim knew what he was talking about, he might have said that 70 percent of 8th grade students were unable to score the equivalent of an A, but that would not be an alarming figure. It would not be a very dramatic story had he said, in sonorous tones, “25 percent of our 8th grade students are ‘below basic’ in reading, and that figure includes students who are learning English and students with disabilities.”

Cheating Under NCLB

Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Tests

By TRIP GABRIEL Published: June 10, 2010

The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.

But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.

The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test by “tubing” it — squeezing a test booklet, without breaking its paper seal, to form an open tube so that questions inside could be seen and used in the guide. The district invalidated students’ scores.

Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children’s standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher — including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers’ performance reviews.

Colorado passed a sweeping law last month making teachers’ tenure dependent on test results, and nearly a dozen other states have introduced plans to evaluate teachers partly on scores. Many school districts already link teachers’ bonuses to student improvement on state assessments. Houston decided this year to use the data to identify experienced teachers for dismissal, and New York City will use it to make tenure decisions on novice teachers.

The federal No Child Left Behind law is a further source of pressure. Like a high jump bar set intentionally low in the beginning, the law — which mandates that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014 — was easy to satisfy early on. But the bar is notched higher annually, and the penalties for schools that fail to get over it also rise: teachers and administrators can lose jobs and see their school taken over.

No national data is collected on educator cheating. Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers — thousands annually — cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.”

Others say that every profession has some bad apples, and that high-stakes testing is not to blame. Gregory J. Cizek, an education professor at the University of North Carolina who studies cheating, said infractions were often kept quiet. “One of the real problems is states have no incentive to pursue this kind of problem,” he said.

Recent scandals illustrate the many ways, some subtle, that educators improperly boost scores:

¶At a charter school in Springfield, Mass., the principal told teachers to look over students’ shoulders and point out wrong answers as they took the 2009 state tests, according to a state investigation. The state revoked the charter for the school, Robert M. Hughes Academy, in May.

¶In Norfolk, Va., an independent panel detailed in March how a principal — whose job evaluations had faulted the poor test results of special education students — pressured teachers to use an overhead projector to show those students answers for state reading assessments, according to The Virginian-Pilot, citing a leaked copy of the report.

¶In Georgia, the state school board ordered investigations of 191 schools in February after an analysis of 2009 reading and math tests suggested that educators had erased students’ answers and penciled in correct responses. Computer scanners detected the erasures, and classrooms in which wrong-to-right erasures were far outside the statistical norm were flagged as suspicious.

The Georgia scandal is the most far-reaching in the country. It has already led to the referral of 11 teachers and administrators to a state agency with the power to revoke their licenses. More disciplinary referrals, including from a dozen Atlanta schools, are expected.

John Fremer, a specialist in data forensics who was hired by an independent panel to dig deeper into the Atlanta schools, and who investigated earlier scandals in Texas and elsewhere, said educator cheating was rising. “Every time you increase the stakes associated with any testing program, you get more cheating,” he said.

That was also the conclusion of the economist Steven D. Levitt, of “Freakonomics” fame and a blogger for The New York Times, who with a colleague studied answer sheets from Chicago public schools after the introduction of high-stakes testing in the 1990s concluded that 4 percent to 5 percent of elementary school teachers cheat.

Not everyone agrees. Beverly L. Hall, who, as the superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools has won national recognition for elevating test scores, said dishonesty was relatively low in education. “Teachers over all are principled people in terms of wanting to be sure what they teach is what students are learning,” she said.

Educators ensnared in cheating scandals rarely admit to wrongdoing. But at one Georgia school last year, a principal and an assistant principal acknowledged their roles in a test-erasure scandal.

For seven years, their school, Atherton Elementary in suburban Atlanta, had met the standards known in federal law as Adequate Yearly Progress — A.Y.P. in educators’ jargon — by demonstrating that a rising share of students performed at grade level.

Then, in 2008, the bar went up again and Atherton stumbled. In June, the school’s assistant principal for instruction, reviewing student answer sheets from the state tests, told her principal, “We cannot make A.Y.P.,” according to an affidavit the principal signed.

“We didn’t discuss it any further,” the principal, James L. Berry, told school district investigators. “We both understood what we meant.”

Pulling a pencil from a cup on the desk of Doretha Alexander, the assistant principal, Dr. Berry said to her, “I want you to call the answers to me,” according to an account Ms. Alexander gave to investigators.

The principal erased bubbles on the multiple-choice answer sheets and filled in the right answers.

Any celebrations over the results were short-lived. Suspicions were raised in December 2008 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which noted that improvements on state tests at Atherton and a handful of other Georgia schools were so spectacular that they approached a statistical impossibility. The state conducted an analysis of the answer sheets and found “overwhelming evidence” of test tampering at Atherton.

Crawford Lewis, the district superintendent at the time, summoned Dr. Berry and Ms. Alexander to separate meetings. During four hours of questioning — “back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,” Dr. Lewis said — principal and assistant principal admitted to cheating.

“They both broke down” in tears, Dr. Lewis said.

Dr. Lewis said that Dr. Berry, whom he had appointed in 2005, had buckled under the pressure of making yearly progress goals. Dr. Berry was a former music teacher and leader of celebrated marching bands who, Dr, Lewis said, had transferred some of that spirit to passing the state tests in a district where schools hold pep rallies to get ready.

Dr. Berry, who declined interview requests, resigned and was arrested in June 2009 on charges of falsifying a state document. In December, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation. The state suspended him from education for two years and Ms. Alexander for one year. (Dr. Lewis, who stepped down as superintendent, was indicted last month on unrelated charges stemming from an investigation into school construction, which he denied.)

Dr. Lewis called for refocusing education away from high-stakes testing because of the distorted incentives it introduces for teachers. “When you add in performance pay and your evaluation could possibly be predicated on how well your kids do testing-wise, it’s just an enormous amount of pressure,” he said.

“I don’t say there’s any excuse for doing what was done, but I believe this problem is going to intensify before it gets better.”

Diane Ravitch: New York education officials are lying to the state’s schoolkids

BY Diane Ravitch

Wednesday, March 31st 2010

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that when states lower their standards, “We are lying to our children.” He must be talking about New York State, which has a well-established record of lying to our children about their progress in school.

Every year, state officials announce another set of dramatic gains on state tests for the children of New York.

And every year, state officials lie to our children.

According to the state, the percentage of fourth-grade students who were proficient readers soared from 48% in 1999 to 77% last year, an impressive feat. Eighth-grade students made no progress from 1999, when only 48% were proficient, until 2006. Then their achievement soared and, by last year, the state proudly announced that 69% of eighth-graders had achieved proficiency on state tests.

In math, the percentage of fourth-graders who were proficient by New York State standards shot up from 67% in 1999 to 87% in 1999. The eighth-grade math scores skyrocketed from 38% in 1999 to 80% last year.

But last week, the federal government released scores for the nation and the states, and New York did not fare well. In fact, almost all of New York’s reported gains for the past seven years disappeared into thin air.

The federal test – the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP – is the gold standard of testing. Congress requires all states to take NAEP tests to audit state claims. The federal audit was an embarrassment for New York.

The reading scores released last week show that 36% of New York’s fourth-graders – not 77% – are proficient. And unlike the state scores, which have gone up every year without fail, the state scores on NAEP for fourth-graders have been flat since 2002. The federal test continues to show huge achievement gaps: 45% of white students are proficient, as are 52% of Asians. This contrasts with 18% of black students and 22% of Hispanic students.

In eighth grade, the picture is no better. On the NAEP test, 33% of our students are proficient in reading, not the 69% claimed by the state. The federal test shows zero improvement at this grade since 1998. And the racial achievement gap is shocking: 44% of whites are proficient, as are 49% of Asians, but only 13% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics.

In math, the state does slightly better, but not much. The federal tests show 40% of our fourth-grade students are proficient, while the state says it is 87%. Over time, the federal scores have improved for this grade, but not for eighth grade. There, only 34% are proficient, not the 80% claimed by the state. And, unlike the state, which has boasted of big improvements in the eighth grade, the federal tests reveal that there have been no gains in eighth grade since 2003.

If students in New York made no gains on the national tests, why did state tests report spectacular progress every year? The people of the state deserve an honest answer.

Fortunately, there is new leadership in Albany. Merryl Tisch, the new chancellor of the Board of Regents, and David Steiner, the new state commissioner of education, have pledged to review the entire testing program. Surely they will determine how standards dropped so low that the public was regularly misinformed about student progress.

Now is the time for honesty, integrity and transparency.

Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/31/2010-03-31_new_york_state_education_officials_are_lying_to_schoolkids.html#ixzz0kMxgqqfn

Test Scores in Chicago and New York Improve Only After Tests Change

In 2003 the State of Illinois changed the high stakes test that determines student proficiency. Scores immediately rose.

In 2006 the State of New York changed the high stakes test that determine student proficiency. Scores immediately rose.

In Chicago Public Schools and New York City Public Schools scores significantly rose. In both cases, Duncan in Chicago and Klein in New York, district leaders claimed victory in improving public education.

Testing by the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress), run by the federal Department of Education, shows little improvement in Chicago or New York City public schools over all the years of use of the new state tests. (See NAEP below.)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)  is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences. 

The Commissioner of Education Statistics, who heads the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education, is responsible by law for carrying out the NAEP project. The National Assessment Governing Board, appointed by the Secretary of Education but independent of the Department, sets policy for NAEP and is responsible for developing the framework and test specifications that serve as the blueprint for the assessments. The Governing Board is a bipartisan group whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Congress created the 26-member Governing Board in 1988. The NAEP assessment operations are carried out with assistance from contractors.

Funny Math: New York City School’s

As Many Schools Earn A’s and B’s, City Plans to Raise Standards

By JENNIFER MEDINA

There is nowhere to go but down.

With the vast majority of New York City schools receiving A’s and B’s on the progress reports released this week, Education Department officials said Thursday that they expected to adjust the grading system, in effect ensuring that more schools would receive lower grades next year.

In fact, school officials who helped create the system said they never meant it to be one that would have so many schools earning the highest marks.

“We are going to raise the bar,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer for the department. He said that while he would want to see a wider distribution of the grades, “At the same time, when we set clear goals and schools meet them, they need to be recognized and rewarded for that.”

The huge increase in the number of top marks on the city report cards — 97 percent of schools received an A or B, up from 79 percent in 2008 — was driven by broad gains on state standardized tests in math and English. This year, the number of students who met state standards jumped to 82 percent in math, compared with 74 percent last year. In English, 69 percent of students passed, up from 58 percent.

The annual A through F grades measure how much students improved at a school, based on performance on the tests for the last three years. So this year, with large improvements on state tests far surpassing the jumps from previous years, many schools received far better grades. The city set the standards for the grades last year and has not changed them, despite the huge gains in state tests.

State education officials are also sensitive to criticism that their benchmarks have lost some of their meaning. Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, has said that she hopes to make changes to the tests this year. Dr. Tisch said Thursday that the huge number of high grades was “one more indicator why we need to address the testing issue as quickly as possible.”

“All you need to do is understand that when you are telling parents that all of our schools are A’s and B’s or that all of our students are proficient, we are not providing a clear view of what is really happening in a school or with a student,” she said. “We need to raise the standards.”

At more than 50 of the schools that received an A on the report card this year, more than half of the fourth graders were below state standards in reading.

Chancellor Joel I. Klein has said that he would support raising the state standards, and at an appearance with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday, he said that while he was proud of schools’ improvements, “nobody should confuse progress with ultimate performance.”

Odelphia Pierre, the principal of Public School 129 in Harlem, said that receiving an A for three years straight on the report card was a huge vote of confidence to the school, which had struggled for years to raise its test scores. But, she said, the school was keenly aware that it would become more difficult to earn an A again next year.

“If you look closely, you can see where we have to really improve in getting our special education population to where they need to be, and that’s a group of students that is coming to us in droves,” Ms. Pierre said. “To us, that A is just an A, and it’s not the A we want it to be yet.”

Amber Charter School, also in Harlem, received an F last year but jumped to an A this year, primarily because far more students earned a Level 3, considered the passing mark, on the state exams. This year, 87 percent of the students met state standards in English, while 54 percent did so in 2008.

“It’s a double-edged sword, to be honest,” said Vashti Acosta, the principal of the school. “Last year it was a wake-up call for everyone, where we were saying, ‘We know this is not the school we have, let’s get together and prove it.’ ”

But she was already fretting a bit about next year’s grade. Since more than 97 percent of the students met state standards in math, it would be difficult to show improvement next year. And it could be even more difficult to earn another A

Testing and NCLB