States Starting Slowly on NCLB Proficiency Goals to Face Crunch, Report Says

States that established modest goals for themselves in the early days of the No Child Left Behind Act may find they need to make nearly impossible improvements in student performance to reach the federal law’s target of 100 percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, according to a study released today by the Center on Education Policy.

The center found that 23 states have, in its words, “backloaded” their student trajectories by calling for smaller gains early on, but planning for jumps of up to 10 percentage points in proficiency beginning with the 2010-11 or 2011-12 school years.

“Many states may have originally set lower achievement goals for the first few years under NCLB in hopes of getting systems in place or gaining some flexibility from Washington later on,” Jack Jennings, the president of the CEP, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization, said in a statement. “But right now, they are still on the hook for the academic equivalent of a mortgage payment that is about to balloon far beyond their...