A bipartisan group of House education leaders signed a letter to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that raises concerns over why the test scores of some students are apparently not being counted under the No Child Left Behind Act.
In the May 4 letter, released last week, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said some states had large numbers of minority and disadvantaged students whose test scores were not factored into whether their schools were making adequate yearly progress under the federal school law.
A recent analysis by the Associated Press found that nearly 2 million students’ test scores were being discounted because the law allows states to avoid counting the results of some subgroups if their numbers are small enough to be statistically insignificant.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. George Miller of California, also signed the letter. A hearing on the issue is expected to be scheduled in the coming weeks.
