For the first time, Fairfax County schools failed to make adequate yearly progress goals under the No Child Left Behind Act, and district officials say it’s primarily because they were required by the federal government to change their policy last school year for testing English-language learners in reading, according to a Washington Post article published Aug. 24.
Officials from the Fairfax County school district put up a good fight last school year to get permission from the U.S. Department of Education to continue to give beginning-level English-language learners an English-proficiency test—instead of a regular reading test—for accountability purposes under NCLB. The Fairfax County school district and a number of other Virginia school districts lost the battle. The Fairfax County superintendent, Jack D. Dale, says he’s hoping that the U.S. Congress will come up with new ways to measure schools’ progress with reauthorization of the federal law, according to the Post article.
See my earlier post, “Fairfax County School Officials Back Down in Testing Impasse.”