Testing targets being missed nationwide

 Prairie Elementary School in Sacramento, California, had not missed a testing target since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. Until now.

The school, perched on a tidy, oak-shaded campus in a working-class neighborhood, has moved each of its student groups—Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites, American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English learners, the disabled—toward higher proficiency in recent years. Overall, the number of its students passing tough statewide tests had increased by more than three percentage points annually, a solid record.

But this year, California schools were required to make what experts call a gigantic leap, increasing the students proficient in every group by 11 percentage points. For the first time, Prairie, and hundreds of other California schools, fell short, a failure that results in probation and, unless reversed, federal sanctions within a year. Across the nation, far more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing targets than in any previous year, according to new state-by-state data. Read the article in The New York Times online.