At What Point Do Schools Fail to Meet Adequate Yearly Progress and What Factors are Most Closely Associated with Their Failure? A Survival Analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors most associated with the probability of Texas high schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB, examining the entire population of all Texas public and charter high schools from 2003-2011, n=1721. While literature to date focuses on the different variables that may affect schools in meeting AYP as well as addressing the success and failure of charter schools, there is a lack of research on the specific variables that have the most impact on failing to meet AYP, considered here as a “hazard”. We used discrete time hazard modeling to estimate the probability of a school failing AYP for the first time in the time period. Our findings indicate that rural schools were the least likely to fail AYP, while schools with higher percentages of African American and Hispanic students and larger class sizes and enrollments failed AYP much more often. As a components of the AYP state determinations, school percent met standard in mathematics and attendance were significant in the model, while graduation rates were not. This study provides one of the first opportunities to examine the year-by-year hazard of failing AYP in Texas over the first decade of NCLB implementation. Key Words: attendance rate, Adequate Yearly Progress, adequacy, assessment, economically disadvantaged, graduation rate, hazard function, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) survival probability