Illinois school test scores: Income-based gap proves hard to close, By Tara Malone and Darnell Little, October 30, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “Surrounded by sports fields and suburban lawns, Hadley Junior High School could be the envy of the state. Nine of every 10 students at the Glen Ellyn school passed state exams in reading and math, according to the 2009 Illinois School Report Card made public Friday. But average scores belie a widespread problem the federal government has spent billions trying to fix nationwide: While at least 95 percent of Hadley’s well-off students passed the eighth-grade reading and math tests, about half of their low-income classmates met the same goals, revealing an achievement gap that is as persistent as it is pernicious. Seven years after the federal No Child Left Behind Law ambitiously pledged to eliminate such disparities and invested nearly $6.2 billion in Illinois schools alone, the progress has been modest and isolated. While the performance gap between advantaged and disadvantaged grade school children narrowed in Illinois since 2002 — in math, the margin shrunk by at least 13 percentage points in third, fifth and eighth grades — the divide among high school juniors actually widened slightly in math and reading…”

• Student ‘proficiency’: What is your state’s definition?, By Amanda Paulson, October 29, 2009, Christian Science Monitor: “How advanced a student is may have more to do with where he lives than how much he knows. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states are under pressure to bring more students up to ‘proficiency’ every year. But each state can define what proficiency means differently. A new report shows just how widely these definitions vary. ‘A proficient reader in State A may be very different from a proficient reader in State B - even though those students may have the same academic skill,’ says Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for assessment at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which released the study Thursday…”
• Federal researchers find lower standards in schools, By Sam Dillon, October 29, 2009, New York Times: “A new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. But lowering standards also confuses parents about how children’s achievement compares with those in other states and countries. The study, released Thursday, was the first by the federal Department of Education’s research arm to use a statistical comparison between federal and state tests to analyze whether states had changed their testing standards. It found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards in fourth- or eighth-grade reading or math from 2005 to 2007. Three states, Maine, Oklahoma and Wyoming, lowered standards in both subjects at both grade levels, the study said…”
• Report: States set low bar for student achievement, By Libby Quaid (AP), October 29, 2009, Idaho Statesman: “Many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not, the Education Department reported Thursday. The agency compared state achievement standards to the more challenging standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress. State standards were lower, and there were big differences in where each state set the bar…”

• Increasing number of schools failed to meet goals, By Emily Johns and Sarah Lemagie, August 11, 2009, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “More schools in Minnesota failed to meet state math and reading goals this year, but data released Monday about which schools are falling behind contained some bright spots for educators. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, 1,048 out of 2,303 schools are not making “adequate yearly progress” under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. That number is up from 931 last year and 727 in 2007. But compared with last year, fewer high schools and junior highs are falling behind. The list of struggling schools grew partly because of elementary schools that didn’t meet targets, which get tougher every year…”
• Minnesota fails to keep pace with No Child Left Behind standards, By Doug Belden and MaryJo Webster, August 11, 2009, Pioneer Press: “About half of Minnesota schools failed to make sufficient progress under state testing guidelines in 2009, roughly the same results as last year. ‘There are no surprises,’ state Education Commissioner Alice Seagren said Monday. With each passing year, Minnesota and other states fall further behind schedule on the federally mandated goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014, but Seagren said Minnesota is ‘making really strong progress in many areas.’ The number of high schools hitting the targets grew, for example, from 210 last year to 242 this year, she said. On the other hand, the number of elementary schools measuring up dropped from 592 to 523. Monday’s release of the “adequate yearly progress” list is step two in the state’s annual high-stakes data dump…”