States Worry New Law Sets Schools Up to Fail

[Carol Holst <kceh@airmail.net>]

States Worry New Law Sets Schools Up to Fail

Use of Test Scores Would Label Most Poor Performers

By Michael A. Fletcher

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, January 2, 2003; Page A01

washingtonpost.com

NEW ORLEANS -- State education officials are warning that a new federal education
law's requirement that each racial and demographic subgroup in a school show
annual improvement on standardized tests will result in the majority of the
nation's schools being deemed failing.

The likelihood that the law would force them to label the majority of their
schools "low performing" is complicating efforts by state educational officials
to meet a Jan. 31 deadline for submitting plans for implementing key parts of the
federal "No Child Left Behind" law. They say federal regulations outlining how to
assess the quality of schools are dangerously arbitrary and inflexible and will
result in schools being treated as failures -- even if they are improving by most
measures.

"I don't know of any state that isn't facing pretty staggering numbers in terms
of schools not meeting" the new law's requirements, said Michael E. Ward,
superintendent of schools in North Carolina and president of the Council of Chief
State School Officers. "A piece of legislation that we think has very worthy
goals risks being undone by its own negative weight."

State officials, most of whom are struggling with deep budget problems, worry
that the law will overtax their limited resources by forcing them to channel
extra money to schools that may not need it, while causing a public relations
nightmare for otherwise improving schools that fall short of the federal
government's requirements.

"What happens is you create a situation where there are so many schools failing
that there is no support for them," said Paul Houston, executive director of the
14,000-member American Association of School Administrators. "The administration
likes to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations and how this law fights
that. But what about the hard bigotry of high expectations without adequate
resources?"

Officials have pleaded with the federal government for flexibility, but their
requests have been brushed aside by the Education Department, which says the law
is written in a way that leaves them no choice. "Only if we hold schools and
school districts accountable for the improved achievement of all students will we
meet the goal of leaving no child behind," said Education Secretary Roderick R.
Paige when he released final regulations for the law in November.

Under the federal law, schools deemed failing for two consecutive years must
facilitate student transfers to better schools -- even those filled to capacity
-- and use public money to provide private tutors for students. If a school
continues to be labeled failing, it must have its principal and teachers replaced
or be reopened as a charter school.

President Bush calls the law "the cornerstone" of his administration's domestic
policy. Its chief goal is to raise student achievement and close the school
performance gap separating white, Asian and middle-class students from
under-performing minority and poor students.

The law, which Bush signed last January, requires schools to test students in
grades three through eight. Students must make steady progress toward raising
achievement levels on the exams, with all students required to reach
state-defined proficiency levels in reading and math by 2014.

The problem being cited by many state and local officials is that the law also
requires school systems to raise the achievement levels of students in each of
five racial and ethnic subgroups, as well as among low-income students, those
with limited English skills and disabled students every year. Any deviation from
steady improvement in any of the subgroups for two consecutive years results in a
school being called low-performing.

Accountability experts say that requirement, coupled with the year-to-year
deviations that typically occur in standardized test results, means that schools
would often be deemed low-performing for what amounts to statistical -- rather
than educational -- reasons.

If two subgroups fail to make sufficient progress in each of two consecutive
years -- for example, disabled students one year and low-income students the next
-- the Education Department requires that the entire school be labeled
low-performing. Also, under the law, two schools with similar test scores can end
up with different labels, depending on the patterns of improvement in their
scores. If a school, for example, makes dramatic improvement one year, then lags
slightly for two more years, it is labeled "low-performing." A school making
slow, but steady progress in all subgroups is fine under the law.

"Even in large schools, you are dealing with small numbers of students in some of
these subgroups," said Richard K. Hill, executive director of the National Center
for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, a consultant for 10 states
developing accountability plans. "There is a strong likelihood that a school's
scores will go up and down based solely . . . on the performance of just a small
handful of students."

That complaint is being registered by states across the country. North Carolina's
highly regarded school accountability system is credited with significantly
lifting student achievement while showing promising signs of closing racial and
economic achievement gaps -- the goals articulated in No Child Left Behind. But
the most optimistic estimate is that 60 percent of the state's public schools
will be deemed failing once the federal law is fully implemented.

"North Carolina has made some of the best academic progress in the nation," said
Ward, the state's schools superintendent. "It is counterintuitive that in a state
that has done this that 60 percent of the schools can't meet the federal
standard. But we attribute that to a federal formula that doesn't make a lot of
sense."

Kentucky officials also are struggling to develop a plan, despite having a school
accountability system hailed by experts as among the nation's best. Now, they
must make significant changes to accommodate the federal mandates.

"At best, I think the law is an unwarranted intrusion into state and local
control of schools," said Bill Weinberg, who quit the Kentucky Board of Education
in November in protest of the federal law. "At worst, it is a cynical attempt by
the Bush administration to build in failure and use that as an argument for
vouchers. "

In Louisiana, education officials are refusing to gut their accountability system
-- which has been widely praised for beginning to alter the state's image as an
educational backwater -- to satisfy federal demands. In statistical models
developed by education officials, as many as 85 percent of Louisiana's public
schools would be deemed low-performing under the federal law within three years
-- an outcome state officials say does not square with the educational
improvement they have witnessed since implementing a state accountability system
five years ago.

At New Orleans's Ray Abrams Elementary School, Lauren G. Brown took over as
principal two years ago, when its dismal academic performance qualified the
school for all the help Louisiana provides under its school accountability
program .

New state money allowed Brown to beef up teacher training and bring in a
"distinguished educator" to help guide instruction. Three tutors work with
students on individual math and reading skills. Students with lagging test scores
attend Saturday school. Those who continue to fail go to summer school. And there
are transition classes for fourth-graders held back for failing the state test
they must pass to go to fifth grade.

The innovations helped Abrams dramatically improve student achievement. And if
the scores don't slip this spring, the school will be in line for a $17,000 bonus
and the purple-bordered gold flag that Louisiana education officials award to
schools exhibiting "exemplary academic growth."

But even while Abrams is on track to be honored for its vast improvement,
Louisiana officials worry that the new federal law will pronounce the school a
failure. Brown says that would torpedo the growing parent-and-teacher morale at
her school. "It would look like we're falling short when we really aren't," she
said.

It is a problem that concerns officials across the state. Although Louisiana has
the second-highest rate of child poverty and the highest percentage of students
enrolled in private school in the nation, its public school test scores have
improved sharply in recent years. Not only did 67 percent of the state's
elementary schools and 59 percent of its high schools show improvement on state
standardized tests administered last spring, but Louisiana also is among those
with the nation's best gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress,
a highly regarded national test.

"This law will leave us talking out of both sides of our mouths: saying that
schools are doing much better on one hand, but failing on the other," said Leslie
Jacobs, a member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and
chief architect of the state's accountability system. Louisiana officials have
met with officials at the Education Department in a fruitless effort to get more
flexibility built into the law's implementation.

Gov. Mike Foster (R) confronted Bush on the subject during a recent trip by the
president to Louisiana. Still, the federal government has not budged as the
deadline for submitting implementation plans approaches. "We are hoping some
other states can show us a way to do this without wrecking our accountability
system," Jacobs said.

Foster promises not to submit to the law without a fight. "States still have some
rights," he said. "I have a lot of friends in Washington. If they don't give us
some flexibility in the law, I'll tell you this: We won't go quietly."

=A9 2003 The Washington Post Company