The test bubbles may be filled in, but area schools aren’t sure they have all the answers.

Area students are busy finishing this year’s Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests, which are incredibly important to schools receiving federal Title 1 dollars.

This year, education experts expect about 82 percent of schools across the nation to fail the No Child Left Behind requirements tests, which students take every April and May. Many feel the prediction outlines how broken current education policy is when it comes to holding schools and students accountable.

Adequate Yearly Progress and the MCA tests are required by the No Child Left Behind Act, and the benchmark for proficiency will increase each year until 2014. The tests results, which are released in July, have been causing school officials and communities headaches since 2005.

When it comes to the MCA, it’s the same routine each year. There’s a large manual to follow that lays out where tests should be stored, how to pass them out, how students should take them, whether they’re countable and in what order they should be repackaged. Every test needs to be sent back, or the school automatically fails regardless of its AYP scores. The directions are ambiguous at times, which mean staff have to be extra careful how they pack.

“AYP is an all or none measure,” said John Alberts, director of educational services at Austin Public Schools. Alberts would know: Austin Public Schools — as a district — hasn’t made AYP for the past three years.

They’re not alone, as plenty of school districts across the state aren’t making AYP. Department of Education officials say 40 percent of U.S. schools failed to make AYP last year.

The number of schools failing could jump to 82 percent because of tightening standards.

“You didn’t see AYP issues showing up,” said Alberts. “This last year you began to see more schools (with issues), these last couple years really because those (goals) keep increasing.”

How MCAs work

According to Alberts, the MCA tests are difficult to measure classroom success by because of how they are structured. The tests, which are part of No Child Left Behind-mandated initiatives, are designed to measure if students meet what NCLB states are the minimum education guidelines for students from third grade through high school. A certain percentage of students, separated into demographic groups, must do well for the district to make AYP goals.

These goals are raised every year, increasing until every school reaches these federally mandated levels. Each school is expected to reach these guidelines by 2014, an expectation many educators and critics of NCLB say is unreasonable and highly unlikely. To add to the confusion, the MCA tests are rotated on cycles between MCA, MCA II and MCA III.

“I don’t feel comfortable holding our students hostage to three tests in order to get a diploma,” said James Dusso, incoming Lyle superintendent and current Lyle principal.

Dusso’s sentiment is echoed by educators across the state, in part because of how confusing AYP mandates are.

However, not every school needs to worry about them. AYP only matters to schools that receive Title 1 funds, which means schools like Austin High School, Ellis Middle School and Banfield Elementary School won’t ever be penalized because they don’t receive Title 1 funds. However, each school’s scores count towards Austin’s district totals, since a majority of Austin schools receive Title 1. MDE officials determine which schools get Title 1 funds, according to Alberts.

Banfield met 70 percent of AYP requirements last year; however, limited English students, special education students, and students on free and reduced price lunch failed reading and math proficiency. Hispanic students failed math proficiency as well.

AHS met 95 percent of AYP requirements in 2010. Hispanic students didn’t meet the math proficiency. Ellis made 97 percent of AYP requirements in 2010, as special education students failed the reading proficiency. The only school to make AYP was Southgate Elementary School, which made all of its requirements.

Educators and researchers take issue with the way students are measured. Minnesota Department of Education officials measure grades against each other every year to track progress, which means this year’s fourth grade scores will be measured against last year’s fourth-grade scores, along with the fourth grade scores from 2009, etc.

“It doesn’t compare one child’s growth from one year to the next,” David Krenz, Austin’s superintendent said last year. “It compares a group of kids’ growth to the next year’s group of kids’ growth. If you really want to be fair to the individual, you have to be comparing how that child grows individually.”

Inflexible testing

Lyle Public Schools knows how painful it is to miss the grade, especially when Lyle students made all of their academic requirements last year.

Some Lyle students attend classes at St. Ansgar High School in Iowa. When students took the math portion of the MCAs last April, Lyle missed its participation quota by five students according to Dusso. There were some students at St. Ansgar during testing, which would have made Lyle proficient in every category.

Since Lyle staff didn’t account for the missing students, tests were coded wrong and Lyle didn’t make AYP because of participation in math for the third year in a row. Schools that don’t make AYP for multiple years have to create an improvement plan to outline how staff will get students up to speed. Improvement plans can’t be written for participation failure, however. Lyle addressed how to raise special education math scores in a 33-page report instead.

“There’s nothing in that plan that talks about participation,” Dusso said. “That’s the layers of bureaucracy. It’s the participation piece (that affected Lyle), and it really came down to five students.”

Dusso said Lyle staff tried to appeal to MDE officials, to no avail.

“It was very frustrating that the Department of Ed was so black and white,” Dusso said.

Looking Ahead

This year’s test scores will be important to Austin, since the district has lagged behind in reading and math goals since 2008, science goals since 2009. Austin made 32 out of 34 total AYP requirements last year; but if all goals aren’t made, the district isn’t considered proficient.

Many districts share the same woes, as many schools haven’t kept up to the increasingly difficult goals each year. While every school is expected to be proficient by 2014, educators and government officials know that’s not going to happen.

“The reality is 100 percent of our schools will not make AYP,” Dusso said.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in March that Department of Education officials project up to 82 percent of U.S. schools would fail state comprehensive testing this year.

“Today, almost 40 percent of America’s schools are not meeting their goals and as we approach the 2014 deadline, that number will rise steeply,” Duncan told Congress.

AYP goals aren’t consistent from state to state, as each state’s legislators set their own education guidelines. Some educators call to replace state-specific rules and tests with a nationwide assessment like other countries. Other officials argue it would conflict with the traditionally local-based education system the U.S. has.

Educators and politicians from all sides of the table are calling for significant reforms to NCLB mandates, which they charge make one-size-fits-all rules for districts which are traditionally locally governed.

Reforms are a long way off, however. There are plenty of questions NCLB mandates have raised, like the significant achievement gap between white and non-white students as well as rich and poor students. Even if the rules change, educators believe there will always be complications with the assessments. Yet school officials agree that holding educators accountable helps students in the long run.

“It’s caused us to really think about how are we measuring student achievement, and how to monitor student achievement better,” Alberts said.