Special Board Meeting July 28, 2011

While the robo-call (and the agenda) said that the only topic to be covered at this special 8 a.m. meeting was the propane contract, that wasn't the case. About half of the 30 minute meeting was spent going over why Cloudcroft did not make AYP this year. There were several handouts provided by Mr. Hancock, which I have included here:

AYP Quick Facts
AYP District Summaries
Cloudcroft Schools Accountability Reports
Advances in New Mexico's Assessment & Accountability System

The bottom line is, way back in 2001-2002, No Child Left Behind (a Federal program), required states to submit plans with benchmarks. The overall goal was that 100% of students would meet proficiency goals in Math and Reading by 2014. In the classic style of kicking the can down the road, New Mexico set the bar low in the first several years, resulting in catch up in the later years. So now, we're in the later years and the bar is getting raised much faster, and the schools that puffed up and touted how great they were because they were meeting AYP in those earlier years (i.e. Cloudcroft) are now disavowing AYP as a valid measurement of anything, and the state of New Mexico is probably going to seek a waiver so it can create its own measurement of success.

To quote our school's superintendent: "There's two ways to make improvement: either really and truly improve, or make the test easier so that it looks like you're improving." So now that only 3 school districts in the entire state are meeting AYP...New Mexico is scrambling around to change the test.

Here is the article covering the meeting from the Alamogordo Daily News.