As defined by National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), AYP was "the amount of annual achievement growth to be expected by students in a particular school, district, or state in the U.S. federal accountability system, No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
[6] To its proponents, the goal of NCLB and the AYP measurement was the strengthening and improvement of the education of elementary and secondary school students.
According to the Department of Education, AYP was a diagnostic tool that determined how schools needed to improve and where financial resources were to be allocated.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige wrote, "The statute gives States and local educational agencies significant flexibility in how they direct resources and tailor interventions to the needs of individual schools identified for improvement... schools are held accountable for the achievement of all students, not just average student performance.
First steps included technical assistance and then, according to the Department of Education, "more serious corrective actions" occurred if the school failed to make AYP.
[8] The purpose of the No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach.
Upon receipt, all criteria provided will be peer reviewed by a panel including representatives, parents, teachers and state and local educational agencies.
Using assessment data from 2002, the U.S. Department of Education determined what specific percentages of students each state is required to make proficient in each subject area.
Once those percentages were determined, each State Department of Education is required to ensure the standards are the same for each public school, district and subgroup of students, irrespective of differences.
[16] Some states, including Missouri, have lowered standards in order to assure the success of their schools and districts meeting AYP.
One example of this is Robert Manwaring (a Senior Policy Analyst at Education Sector), who has many suggestions at the federal, state and local levels.
On the federal level, Manwaring believes that No Child Left Behind has been too "hands-off" and that states have been avoiding hard choices such as replacing people in failing schools.
He believes the key is for the federal government to insist on heavier oversight from the states and to propose shorter timelines for quicker actions to be taken with consistently failing schools.
He believes that states should be in charge of approving the "other major restructuring plans" (as discussed above) for schools, in order to ensure that they are the right steps to drastically improve student performance.
Ohio is proposing a more subtle "growth model" that would allow schools to better demonstrate progress without jeopardizing past academic accomplishments.
[27] NCLB was not set in place just to make sure students meet proficiency, but also to encourage teachers to become more qualified and agree to working in different environments depending on need.
These include tuition benefits, loan forgiveness programs, and housing assistance, to encourage people to enter the profession in general, to better their qualifications, or to work in particular school settings.
Duncan also believes that this kind of system narrows curriculum and mislabels schools as failing, even though they may be demonstrating academic growth in other ways other than state tests.