It's puzzling why the writer of this story casts a vague blame on "education leaders" for failing to meet NCLB's AYP deadlines.

Um, like who? Is it my school's principal? (Not)

The district superintendent. (Wrong again)

Could it be the State Office of Education. (Getting pretty warm)

The fact is, the USOE is not only late getting AYP scores out late each year, they get them out wrong. It's a good thing there's 30 day period to straighten out the mess before the numbers become official.

USOE's best efforts and intentions notwithstanding, it's NCLB that's a mess. The law was written by the same people who want private education vouchers across the country. NCLB is DESIGNED to make schools fail. Imagine if your child was in a class of 40 students, but three of the students fail the test, so the whole class gets an "F". That's the way AYP works.

Parents will be wise to count the number of YES scores a school gets, and read which categories get NO, before accepting NCLB's yes/no grade that demands 100-percent "yes" scores for every school.

The deadlines are completely unrealistic. Our district wants to test year round schools at the end of April this year, which means 2 MONTHS of teaching will be cut out! Talk about completely inaccurate scores! Yet No Child Left Behind has become this altar at which we must all worship, no matter what. The tail is now wagging the dog.

Since AYP is measured on a school by school basis - a school is measured against only itself, why does Judy Park make the claim that "state reviewers need all the data before they can start any analysis." ?
once a schools scores are available, the AYP for that school should be available the same day.

Why should analysis take a long time? Put the data for each school into a properly designed spreadsheet and the numbers are there in seconds.

I suggest making the raw data available as soon as the tests are scored, and lets see if AYP can be computed by someone other than the state in less time. I predict that they can.