Pink slips for principals and teachers. School-funded tutoring for poor kids. Schools are increasingly looking at those kind of consequences for failing to raise math and reading scores.The federal No Child Left Behind law says that by the 2013-14 school year all students must pass state tests in these subjects.
About half of the states have steady annual goals for increasing the percentage of students passing, or working at their proper grade level. But the other half set the bar very low early on, and starting about now expect big annual achievement gains, according to a report being released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.
Educators liken the latter strategy to a balloon payment mortgage, in which home owners have a final payment that is much larger than previous ones.
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