President Barack Obama hopes to make extensive revisions to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB). Among his goals are to change the way that school performance is gauged by using broader measurements than students’ test scores to track student growth, giving schools more flexibility to meet targets for progress, administering better tests to students and focusing intervention on schools with the lowest performance rates.

The Obama Administration has criticized NCLB by saying that it creates incentives for states to lower their standards, emphasizes punishing schools that are considered to be failing over rewarding schools that are successful and tries to implement the exact same intervention measures for all schools that are failing.

“Obviously we want to see changes [to NCLB],” said principal Christopher Garran. “[Now] everyone has to fit through the same square peg . . . Obama’s proposals send us in the right direction.”

Now, NCLB requires that schools make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which is a measure of a school’s performance based on student test scores. Each year, state education departments individually increase the minimum test scores that a school’s students must earn in order to meet AYP requirements. Schools can also make AYP by consistently keeping their scores above the state requirement, without necessarily having their scores improve year-to-year. If schools fail to meet the state’s requirement for student test scores, the school fails to meet AYP standards and risks being labeled as a failing school.

This system for measuring school progress has been heavily criticized because it rates schools based on students’ standardized test scores.

“Standardized tests don’t measure kids’ progress very well,” said junior Iliana Lang. “It’s unfair to give the exact same tests to all students.”

For schools to meet AYP, students in the aggregate, as well as students divided into subgroups, must pass AYP. For AYP purposes, students are divided into groups of white, African American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan native, Special Education, students with Limited English Proficiency and students who qualify for Free and Reduced price meals.

In Maryland high schools, the scores that students earn on the algebra and English High School Assessments are used to calculate a school’s progress at meeting AYP.

WJ has met AYP for all years since it was first measured in 2003.

“NCLB has not had a big impact [at WJ] because teachers are not urged to teach to the tests,” said Amy Vachon, WJ’s Staff Development teacher.

Obama wants to replace AYP with reforms that consider student academic growth, the school’s progress in closing achievement gaps between students and students’ ability to enter college or a career upon graduation when analyzing a school’s performance.

Changes to NCLB would have little effect on WJ’s curriculum because WJ has always met AYP.

According to a Department of Education analysis announced on March 9, 82 percent of schools in the U.S. could miss academic targets set forth by NCLB this year, which would cause them to be labeled as failing.

“NCLB will lose all credibility [if the majority of the nation’s schools are labeled as failing],” said Garran. “Ten high schools in MCPS didn’t meet AYP last year. Eventually all schools in MCPS will fail to meet the rising standards.”

Garran also predicts imminent failure for one of WJ’s subgroups.

“WJ will fail to meet AYP standards for Special Education students within the next two years,” he said.