Science results for the 2005 Trial Urban District Assessment, a branch of the National Assessment of Education Progress, were released Nov. 15, assessing performance of fourth- and eighth-graders in 10 districts nationwide in mathematics, reading, writing and science.
Although NAEP-the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas-has been in place since 1969, TUDA was implemented in 2002 to give each district a snapshot of its progress and national comparison.
Charlotte, one of the 10 districts sampled, performed better in science than most of the other districts, said Marcie Hickman, the NAEP state coordinator for North Carolina.
But closer to home, only 11 out of 46 public schools in Durham are making adequate annual progress, according to measurements taken last year through No Child Left Behind, a federal law also enacted in 2002 that requires schools to improve student achievement yearly.
However, standards set by NCLB, which assesses everything from the performance of minority groups to graduation rates and attendance, are hard to interpret because they change from year to year, said Lorraine Tuck, coordinator of research and development for Durham Public Schools.
"The bugaboo with NCLB is they set arbitrary levels of progress," Tuck said, adding that it is problematic to compare Durham Public Schools to schools in other districts because they are often composed of different percentages of minority groups.
Often, subgroups play an integral part in assessing whether or not a school has improved, Tuck said.
If at least 95 percent of a single subgroup-including African-American, Hispanic and English-as-a-Second-Language students-do not show up to take a standardized test, the school fails, said Richard Webber, principal of Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham.
To make Adequate Yearly Progress, a school's test results must meet targets set annually by each state's board of education. Overall test results are taken into account along with individual subgroup performance.
Jordan, which did not meet AYP in the 2004-2005 school year, nevertheless ranked high in many areas of standardized testing used to measure academic performance in North Carolina.
"The real issue is the window of opportunity," Webber said, adding that he wished he was given a week to conduct the test instead of a few days because it might have increased attendance.
If a school does not make AYP two years in a row, it must give students the opportunity to transfer schools. Although schools in Durham have not encountered problems with retention because of this sanction, their reputations are nevertheless on the line if they are reported as failing schools.
"It gives us a negative impact in the community-that's the biggest issue," Webber said, noting that AYP classifies a school as either successful in all areas or not at all.
Like any national assessment of educational progress, NCLB is a complex piece of legislation that is open to interpretation, said Doris Walker, principal of Bethesda Elementary School.
Although schools that receive federal Title I funding for students from low-income families risk losing the funds if they do not make AYP, they can still receive funding for tutoring, as in Bethesda's case.
Walker said she makes an effort to understand NCLB because it is the law, but also to make sure her students are not hurt by it in any way.
"I think all standardized testing has bias," she said.
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