Nearly All Florida Schools Fail to Meet NCLB Standards

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

If nothing else, the striking difference between the George and Jeb 
school grading "standards" demonstrates the idiocy of trying to measure 
(let alone improve) educational quality with standardized tests. It's a 
great opportunity to highlight the contradictions as well as to watch 
the politicians squirm to make sense of them.

      STATE SCHOOLS FAIL TO MEET NEW FEDERAL TEST STANDARDS
                  FEDERAL, STATE RESULTS DIFFER
                  Miami Herald -- August 8, 2003
                       by Matthew I. Pinzur

Nearly 90 percent of Florida's public schools failed to meet reading and 
math standards this year under the new federal No Child Left Behind law, 
The Herald learned Thursday.

There are no direct consequences to the failures, but they are a 
stinging rebuke to a system that Gov. Jeb Bush's A+ Plan for Education 
has painted as steadily improving.

'What purpose does it serve to call a school an `A' if it's not making 
adequate progress?'' asked Sam Yarger, dean of the University of Miami 
School of Education.

State education officials are scheduled to release the results today in 
Tallahassee, but sources familiar with the data said only 13 percent of 
the state's schools demonstrated ''adequate yearly progress,'' federal 
lingo for meeting No Child Left Behind standards.

Only 10 percent of Miami-Dade County schools and 18 percent in Broward 
County met those standards.

'Just like an `A' student has room for improvement, even a top school 
can work toward improving performance,'' said Frances Marine, 
spokeswoman for the Florida Deparment of Education.

Less than two months ago, Bush touted continuing improvement in the 
state's school grades: There were six times as many A schools this year 
than when grading began in 1999, and fewer than half as many F schools.

`A DILEMMA'

But the poor showing under No Child Left Behind -- a cornerstone of 
President Bush's 2000 election campaign -- carried into those A schools: 
Of 1,229 statewide, only 22 percent made adequate yearly progress.

Six percent of the state's B schools succeeded, followed by 2 percent of 
C schools. No D or F schools qualified.

''It creates a dilemma for the governor,'' said Stephen Kutno, a vice 
president at The Princeton Review who has studied state testing and No 
Child Left Behind.

If a school fails to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive 
years, it is placed on a ''needs improvement'' list. But being on that 
list has consequences only for schools in low-income neighborhoods that 
receive Title I federal funding. Students at those schools can transfer 
to higher-performing public schools.

State and federal officials said the Bush brothers' plans were designed 
to look at public schools in different ways and are not contradictory.

''The two measures are actually complimentary,'' said Jill Bratina, the 
governor's spokeswoman. ``The A+ Plan measures individual student 
progress, and No Child Left Behind measures the performance of groups of 
students.''

Because No Child Left Behind specifically looks at minority, disabled or 
impoverished students, the vastly different results suggest low 
performance among those groups.

''When you aggregate the data together, certain subgroups aren't 
reported out and you don't find out that those groups are struggling,'' 
said Ron Tomalis, an assistant U.S. secretary of education. ``By 
breaking it out by subgroups, No Child Left Behind finds which groups 
are succeeding and which are having trouble.''

The A+ Plan does track minority performance, which lags but is improving 
faster than overall scores.

''The A+ Plan doesn't turn a blind eye to educating minority students,'' 
Marine said.

Both programs examine a school's average scores on the Florida 
Comprehensive Assessment Test, but No Child Left Behind also checks 
scores for up to eight student subgroups: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, 
American Indian, learning disabled, limited English proficient and low 
income.

If any of those subgroups fails to meet benchmark test scores -- or if 
fewer than 95 percent of the students in a subgroup take the exam -- the 
entire school fails.

''Schools are held accountable for the achievement of all students, not 
just average student performance,'' wrote U.S. Secretary of Education 
Rod Paige in a 2002 letter that explained No Child Left Behind.

State officials have blamed that hair trigger for the large failure 
rate, but No Child Left Behind has a complicated back door, called the 
safe-harbor exemption, which allows schools to claim adequate yearly 
progress even if one subgroup misses target scores by a reasonable margin.

CAN'T BE DISMISSED

With that escape valve, Kutno said Florida's 88 percent failure rate is 
too large to be dismissed as a technicality.

''That's just trying to put a positive spin on it,'' Kutno said. ``It is 
identifying some underlying issues not being addressed by the Florida 
grading system.''

He also suggested a second concern raised by the new scores.

School grades are influenced heavily by year-to-year improvement, rather 
than actual scores. Since the federal program is a one-year snapshot, 
Kutno said upward trends in school grades might have been misleading.

''The state plan is the grade for effort, essentially, while the federal 
plan is for attainment,'' he said.

The heavy focus on improvement is valued by district officials, 
especially in urban counties that would otherwise have a hard time 
earning top grades.

''The [No Child Left Behind] model tells you where you'd like to be, but 
in terms of success you want to see what a school has done to make 
change this year,'' said Ted Rebarber, president of Accountability 
Works, a nonprofit research group that studies testing.

HIGH STANDARDS

The Florida Education Department also defended the results by pointing 
to the high standards the state imposed in its plan to put the federal 
law into practice.

''We need to continue to set high standards and our teachers and 
students will continue to achieve,'' Marine said.

Other states have been criticized for lowering benchmarks or tailoring 
goals to make their results appear better. The law gave states wide 
flexibility, subject to federal approval, over how high scores should be 
and how they should be calculated.

''In 50 out of 50 states these are going to be hinky numbers in the 
first year,'' said Lisa Keegan, CEO of the Education Leaders Council, a 
Washington group that supports accountability and school choice. 
``Florida didn't do some of the fudging other states did.''

The different tests, standards and plans make state-to-state comparisons 
difficult, and fewer than a dozen have released their lists. More are 
expected next week, and Rebarber said he expects most will have 
similarly high failure rates.

Education leaders are especially concerned about confusing parents, who 
have heard the governor celebrate annual improvements in school grades.

'If I saw that my state graded me as an `A' and then the federal 
government said we hadn't met the No Child Left Behind Act, I would be 
very confused and asking a lot of questions,'' said Karin Brown, a 
parent activist and former president of the Dade County Council 
PTA/PTSA. ``From a parent point of view, there's definitely a 
contradiction here.''