An uncertain future for 'No Child left Behind'
4 commentsby Emily Gersema - Jan. 25, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Former President George W. Bush finished his tenure without having won congressional renewal of his No Child Left Behind policy, which in a seven-year span has increased nationwide tracking of student achievement.

With President Barack Obama now at the helm, Bush's prized project is up for debate.

It's unclear what Obama and just-confirmed U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will change in the policy; they'll need support from Congress. But the new president has been critical of it, echoing teachers' concerns about the costs of NCLB mandates for student improvement and the disparities in state standardized tests.
Arizona school educators and parents have a host of suggestions for polishing the policy that aims to hold teachers and schools accountable for student achievement. Their thoughts are combined here as an informal memo to the president and his education administrators.


One size fits all

Most Arizona educators agree that the premise of No Child Left Behind - accountability - is a laudable goal.

Panfilo Contreras, the head of the Arizona School Boards Association, said the law has forced educators to more closely track the academic progress of children who historically have been at risk of struggling academically - kids for whom English is a second language, minorities and special-needs students.

Under NCLB, states and school districts must compile and monitor the test results of children in those subgroups. But if a school falls short in testing the children in any of these subgroups, it could face sanctions.

A school that serves a large number of students who are learning English, minority or in special-education programs could, if it fails to meet the federal standards for three consecutive years, lose its federal Title I money as a consequence - the very funding it needs to pay for staff or other resources that could bring those at-risk children up to speed.

"How smart is that? You lose the funding that is designated specifically for the kids of need," Contreras said.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has been tangling with federal officials over the lack of accommodation for students who have special needs or who aren't fluent in English.

For example, some children with learning disabilities or dealing with a language barrier can do well on a test if a teacher reads aloud the question-and-answer choices. Others may perform well if allowed to use a calculator.

But those tools are considered special accommodations under No Child Left Behind. The students who need such aides are counted as not having taken the test - a mark against the school that leads to a rating of having failed to meet the federal measure of student improvement, adequate yearly progress.

"It's a frustrating experience for the students," said Barb VeNard, an assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum for Gilbert Public Schools.

VeNard agrees that academic standards are necessary to guide schools and students toward academic success, but said the objectives need to be flexible.

Right now, the law takes a one-size-fits-all approach. But children "are not all at the same level," VeNard said.


Out of reach?

No Child Left Behind set a high bar: By 2014, every student is expected to master grade-level reading and math. Schools must demonstrate through testing that students are improving each year. Schools that fulfill these requirements are labeled as having met adequate yearly progress, or AYP. A school or district that repeatedly falls short of testing and student-improvement goals may face sanctions.

The punitive aspect is a key reason a Higley Unified School District fifth-grade teacher, Terri Schilling, has misgivings about the federal policy. It forces teachers, administrators and schools to spend much of their time on preparing kids for a single test, the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), usually taken in the spring.

Her school, Power Ranch Elementary, a K-8 school with 1,200 kids, was among 321 schools in the state that earned the state's highest rating, "excelling," on the annual AZ Learns report, but it wasn't easy.

Students get nervous for AIMS testing, and teachers worry about meeting state and federal benchmarks every year, she said.

"It just seems like we have got a lot of pressure," Schilling said. "Sometimes a few students can mean the difference between being an 'excelling school' and a 'highly performing' one (under AZ Learns) or making adequate yearly progress."

Schilling said it's important to have standards to make sure children are learning, but it hinges too much on the results of a single state exam. More testing tools and methods should be utilized to gauge student progress, she said.

"To me, the (AIMS) test is just a snapshot of that kid that testing day," Schilling said. "It might have been a bad day for that kid. They may not have been feeling well."


Unfunded mandate

States are gathering more data about student performance because of the reporting requirements of No Child Left Behind. The policy has driven state education boards and local district governing boards to change their own academic standards and reporting requirements.

AZ Learns, for example, is Arizona's school report-card system that rates schools on a scale of five labels - from best to worst: highly performing, performing plus, performing, underperforming and failing.

The extent of the data collection is vast. Under AZ Learns, for example, districts are judged on their AIMS results, the state's calculation for measuring academic progress, graduation and dropout rates, language test results for students learning English, and whether they have met the federal benchmark for student improvement, adequate yearly progress.

All of this must be tracked and compiled for a single report.

Virginia McElyea, superintendent of Deer Valley Unified School District, said the data collection has been costly.

Schools have had to hire information specialists or research professionals to glean the student information and train staff how to utilize the data-storing software to improve instruction. Plus, districts have had to buy special software to help them store all of the data electronically, and they've bought test-preparation materials.

Total costs can range from thousands of dollars to millions, depending on the size of the school district and its staff. Increased accountability, although laudable, has a hefty price tag, McElyea said.

"The intent of the law - nobody can argue it," she said. But "it's largely been an unfunded mandate."

She and other educators acknowledge that data collection on students has been beneficial. The information can help teachers identify areas on which students need to focus.

Deer Valley teachers are utilizing software to develop their own tests to routinely check on their students' development, rather than waiting months for AIMS results to be released.

McElyea said she believes it's time to start a statewide longitudinal data system that will track the performance of every individual child. This would help teachers tailor their instruction to the needs of each student.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... d0125.html

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" No illegals left behind " is doing serious harm to our children`s education .