The president of Education Minnesota, the state educators’ union, cautioned against judging the quality of a school using the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report issued Aug. 30 by the Minnesota Department of Education. 

“Many parents are shocked when they see their school on the failing list because it just doesn’t reflect their personal experience,” said Tom Dooher, Education Minnesota president. “In fact, some of the schools listed as failing to make AYP this year are on the 2006 Newsweek list of the top schools in the country.” 

Education Minnesota wants parents to understand what the results mean for the local schools where they are sending their kids in just a few days.

“It is important to understand that Adequate Yearly Progress is a misnomer because it actually is based on proficiency and not progress,” said Dooher. Under No Child Left Behind, AYP status does not reflect the tremendous growth most students make during the school year, but instead provides a snapshot of their proficiency.

“This way of labeling schools is too simplistic. School accountability cannot be reduced to a simple rating like a movie or dining review. Schools and students are much more complex and cannot be evaluated by a one-time snapshot. Consider your driver’s license photo. That is a representation of you at one moment in time but in no way accurately represents who you are. The same is true of the AYP results,” Dooher stated.