I would hope that every school wants to make improvements each year.

Dr. Alonzo seems to want to dodge blame and question the system because it doesn't reflect well on his leadership. clearly this man should be in Baltimore City Politics instead.

AYP is a big deal no matter who says the system is flawed. If a school fails to meet AYP, it usually means that many of the minority and special ed students are not meeting standards. In other words, the gap between white students and minority students is usualy larger than schools that do make AYP. Once the school fails three years, the low-income students, usually the minority students receive free tutoring. Here is the problem. School districts do not want the Feds telling them how to spend their federal dollars. This causes a host of problems. For example, kids are not necessary made aware of the additional help, SES tutoring. Why? Any unused funds that a school does not use on SES tutoring, the school district can then divert the money into other controllable coffers. If you look at the schools in Atlanta that cheated, you will find that they did so because of money. The school superintendents knew that missing AYP would result in spending money on tutoring for low-income students and offering students the option to move to another school. Both options are beneficial to the student, but take money from the school district.

If the four approved intervention methods all involve removing the principal and three of the four require replacing staff, I would think meeting AYP is very important to the adults in any school.

The CEO says he would not fire a principal for meeting AYP but he has closed schools which is a very harsh action to take and more harmful than removing a principal.

I just want to reiterate, as was done very very late in the original story, that AYP is a moving target. Every year, the bar gets raised with the idea that in 2014, the bar is at 100% of students scoring proficient in Math and Reading.

Making progress does NOT mean you will make AYP because AYP is higher every year than it was the year before. So just because you beat last year's scores is no guarantee at ALL that you will make AYP. In fact, you can be improving as a school every single year and find yourself on track for closure or firings, etc. because you didn't meet AYP three years in a row.

To say a school is failing because 100% of its students are not passing a test that hasn't even been proven to test what it is supposed to test, (or accomodate special education and ESL students) is the same thing as saying someone cannot swim because they drowned out in the middle of the ocean.

I'd like to see a comprehensive list of the schools that made progress on their MSAs this year. Although I don't really like the MSA measure, if we are going to use it at all, let's at least compare apples to apples-- i.e. last year's hard scores to this year's hard scores. Then we can have a real discussion of whether or not schools are failing.

The thing that bothers me about the whole thing is that failing to make AYP (as 90% of schools did this year) means that it then becomes a test of musical chairs, or rather inter-personal politics, as to which schools will be set on a track for closure or zero-basing, or whatever. Politics has nothing to do with good school policies and good education-- it has to do with who is kissing up to who. The AYP bar is just the excuse to put politics in charge of what happens here, not hard data.

If I failed 90% of my students, I would be deemed a bad teacher. Let's just admit that the AYP thingy is bad policy and move on.

I just want to reiterate, as was done very very late in the original story, that AYP is a moving target. Every year, the bar gets raised with the idea that in 2014, the bar is at 100% of students scoring proficient in Math and Reading.

Making progress does NOT mean you will make AYP because AYP is higher every year than it was the year before. So just because you beat last year's scores is no guarantee at ALL that you will make AYP. In fact, you can be improving as a school every single year and find yourself on track for closure or firings, etc. because you didn't meet AYP three years in a row.

To say a school is failing because 100% of its students are not passing a test that hasn't even been proven to test what it is supposed to test, (or accomodate special education and ESL students) is the same thing as saying someone cannot swim because they drowned out in the middle of the ocean.

I'd like to see a comprehensive list of the schools that made progress on their MSAs this year. Although I don't really like the MSA measure, if we are going to use it at all, let's at least compare apples to apples-- i.e. last year's hard scores to this year's hard scores. Then we can have a real discussion of whether or not schools are failing.

The thing that bothers me about the whole thing is that failing to make AYP (as 90% of schools did this year) means that it then becomes a test of musical chairs, or rather inter-personal politics, as to which schools will be set on a track for closure or zero-basing, or whatever. Politics has nothing to do with good school policies and good education-- it has to do with who is kissing up to who. The AYP bar is just the excuse to put politics in charge of what happens here, not hard data.

If I failed 90% of my students, I would be deemed a bad teacher. Let's just admit that the AYP thingy is bad policy and move on.

Unfortunately, AYP matters too much. AYP should matter when the basic quantities of conduct are safely to be taken for granted by the public. Political correctness never comes to the ball dressed as political correctness. It comes dressed as AYP, inter alia.

Apparently, AYP is more important than making sure that our students are well nourished and healthy. My school does not offer ANY time for recess, and students are cooped in the classroom all day long.

According to EVERY psychology theory I have read, the basics of life such as comfort, food, shelter, water, must be achieved before other goals could be obtained.. I think our school system has it ass-backwards.

City teacher raises an interesting point here. I've been teaching in the district for several years now and there are no working drinking fountains in the school. They brought in water coolers but they put them places where the kids don't have ready access to them.

Many of the kids I work with are dehydrated because they don't have a way to get anything to drink. They get a small carton of juice or a milk for lunch and that's that. some may say this is not a big deal but it is one when you are stuck in an 85+ degree classroom where the windows tilt in instead of raising up.

I noticed that the Chicago schools were providing fans for the teachers that needed them. I may be a bit cynical at this juncture but I'm reasonably sure that I will need to use my own funds to purchase a fan or two if I want them in my classroom. I'm a second career teacher and have had many kinds of jobs but all of the other places I worked provided me with the tools i needed to do my job and did not expect me to use my own funds to provide them.

Maybe this has something to do with why some schools make AYP and others do not.