It’s 2010, only four years away from No Child Left Behind’s 2014 “Armageddon” year — when every child needs to be proficient in reading and math. There is gnashing of teeth in every state as target pass rates increase in the “subgroups” that cause most schools to fall short of their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP).

In Virginia, only 12 school divisions out of 132 met all benchmarks for the year, compared to 60 last year. That’s a drop to 20 percent of the previous year’s rate. Yet, despite this huge drop in benchmark success, most divisions saw their scores increase overall. What’s wrong with that picture?

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