Have your heard? Washington’s statewide “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) results will be announced later this week. Why, of course you have! It’s all over the papers. And, in most cases, the situation isn’t pretty.

Both the Kitsap Sun and Everett Herald have already reported that multiple schools in their districts did not hit their AYP targets under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act — and, unfortunately, they’re not alone. Due to the fact that Washington’s target AYP goals increased this year, it is likely that hundreds of schools and many districts will not make AYP and will thus enter a federal watch list as “schools in improvement.” Some schools who have repeatedly not hit their AYP targets will face federal penalties.

The federal watch list is growing, not because students are failing more than in the past, but because rising standards make it tougher for schools to avoid the list, OSPI’s Nathan Olson told district officials at a workshop last week.

Try telling that to the Kitsap Sun. Their editorial today focused on a scathing critique of the NCLB and stated that “[the act's] sanctions impede a school's ability to educate the students whose test scores triggered them in the first place…If anything, schools struggling to provide education to students with special needs need more money, not less. As things stand, the federal act is arguably doing more harm than good.”

And this is likely just the beginning. Though we were not shown the final AYP results at the OSPI workshop I attended last week, the mood amongst district officials (many of whom already knew their schools' results) was somber and unequivocally depressing.

Hold on, this news may hit like a tidal wave.

To learn more about Washington's upcoming AYP results, visit OSPI's website.