Bruce Buchanan of the Greensboro News & Record has just shown once again why he is one of North Carolina?s sharpest and most effective education reporters. As I noted in my column today, North Carolina made its public schools look better under the federal No Child Left Behind criteria by allowing for more of a margin of error. That generated a big jump in the percentage of NC schools appearing to meet the federal law?s annual growth standard ? to nearly 71 percent in 2003-04 vs. 47 percent in 2002-03. Other reporters noted that without the statistical change, the 2003-04 percentage would have been 56 percent, or ?still a nearly 10 point gain? as several stories put it.
Not so fast. Buchanan was apparently the only one to note that if the statistical change had been applied to last year?s data, the percentage would have been 57 percent. In other words, if you take the statistical adjustment out of the picture, slightly fewer schools met the standard this year compared to last year.
Excellent work from Bruce. Not-so-excellent work from his peeers. And bad testing program from the state.
