WashPost on Draft NCLB Reauthorization Bill

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

CONGRESSMAN OFFERS REVISIONS TO "NO CHILD"

PROPOSAL WOULD LESSEN SOME PENALTIES
Washington Post -- August 29, 2007
by Jay Mathews

The leading House Democrat on education issues proposed revisions 
yesterday to the No Child Left Behind law that would ease the penalties 
for public schools that barely miss academic testing targets but tighten 
another rule that has helped the District and Virginia.

U.S Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and 
Labor Committee and a leading sponsor of the law in 2001, called his 
proposal a work in progress. He and three other committee members were 
floating the ideas as they move toward introducing a bill likely to 
contain major changes to the controversial law. Miller has said he wants 
to move a bill through the House of Representatives next month.

The proposal would allow states to use more than annual tests in reading 
and math to rate schools; give credit to states for students who are 
projected to reach proficiency within three years; and require states to 
test certain students with limited English skills in their native 
language. For some schools that fall only slightly short of academic 
targets, the proposal would also lift requirements to provide 
after-school tutoring and let students transfer to better schools.

In addition, Miller proposed strengthening a rule that requires test 
scores to be reported separately for groups of students identified by 
ethnicity, race, family income and other factors. Currently, Maryland 
reports separate scores for groups in a given school if there are at 
least five students in the demographic category. D.C. schools report 
scores from all groups with at least 40 students in a given school, and 
Virginia sets the threshold at 50 students.

The proposal would require scores to be reported -- and achievement 
raised -- for all demographic groups with at least 30 students in a 
school. That could make it harder for Virginia and D.C. schools to reach 
academic targets.

The proposal also endorsed allowing states to rate schools based on the 
progress of individual students, rather than comparing, for example, 
this year's third-graders with last year's. That would build on a trial 
"growth-model" accountability program the Bush administration recently 
launched.

"The recognition throughout the educational community of the value of 
measuring how schools do with individual students over time is both 
striking and encouraging," said Thomas Toch, co-director of the 
D.C.-based think tank Education Sector.

Nina S. Rees, former head of the U.S. Education Department's Office of 
Innovation and Improvement in the Bush administration and now senior 
vice president of the tutoring provider Knowledge Universe Education, 
said the proposal would keep tutoring and parental-choice requirements 
for schools that missed targets by a wide margin but "ultimately reduce 
the number of schools that have to offer those options to families."

Miller's draft also puts new emphasis on high school dropouts, proposing 
resources to help schools with the lowest graduation rates have 
"data-driven decision making, improved curriculum and instruction, 
personalization of the school environment, staff collaboration and 
professional development and individualized student supports," according 
to a summary of the plan.

In another shift, Miller would relax accountability rules, allowing the 
use of more than test scores to rate schools. Other measures of 
progress, the summary said, could include "graduation rates, dropout 
rates, college-going rates, percentages of students successfully 
completing end-of-course exams for college preparatory courses" and 
improvement in the performance of the worst and best students in a school.

The law requires annual testing in reading and math in grades three 
through eight and once in high school. Although many critics of No Child 
Left Behind promote multiple measures of school performance, some 
backers of the law have expressed doubts about changes that would reduce 
the urgency of raising standardized test scores for all students, 
including the disadvantaged.

   
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801762.html