(Photo: MGN)BALTIMORE (AP/WBOC)- Maryland education officials are launching a new program for assessing the accountability of each school.
The new School Progress Index was created under the waiver Maryland received from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
State officials say the new measure aims to cut in half the number of students who do not achieve proficient scores on the standardized tests since by 2017.
Under No Child Left Behind, all students in the state would have been required to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. The waiver will prevent a growing number of schools from being labeled as failing.
State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Lillian M. Lowery said the new measure will provide a more comprehensive snapshot of each individual school and how its students are performing.
"We should be rewarding those underperforming schools that have started to make real progress, just as we should be taking a closer look at top schools whose progress may have stalled in some areas," Lowery said. "Each school now has its own targets at which to aim, and that paves the way for continued progress in all of our classrooms."
School Progress Index information for each of Maryland's 1,400 public schools is available at http://mdreportcard.org. Additional SPI information is available at http://MarylandPublicSchools.org.
