Re: SF Gate: Education Act ties cash to exams/Low

["Art Burke" <aburke@vansd.org>]

Heck, if you're in a hurry, lose the money now.  Art

>>> kvscanty@pacbell.net 01/09/03 05:13PM >>>

 Art, this was in the SF Chron today - so we just have to wait for 11
years
to lose the money? Karen
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This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate.
The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/01/09/BA128549.DTL

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Thursday, January 9, 2003 (SF Chronicle)
Education Act ties cash to exams/Low scores may cause schools to lose
funding
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer


   By 2014, it will be illegal to do poorly in school.
   That's essentially what the new federal Education Act says,
requiring
every student group -- blacks, whites, Latinos, English-learners and
the
disabled -- to do well in school or jeopardize federal Title I funding
for
poor students.
   Based on how well students are doing in school today, however, test
experts with the California Department of Education said Wednesday that
98
percent of its schools would fail to meet that target a dozen years
from
now.
   At the same time, the state Board of Education approved a plan to
achieve
"adequate yearly progress" at schools to comply with the newly revised
federal Education Act.
   Under the rigorous law, dubbed "No Child Left Behind" by President
Bush,
all student groups at schools receiving Title I funds must achieve a
level
of "proficient" on a state test. California is the nation's largest
Title
I recipient, getting about $2 billion a year to benefit poor students.
   "Today, not one school in Palo Alto, Beverly Hills, Marin or the
entire
state of California meets the level of 100 percent proficient," said
board
President Reed Hastings. "So the federal guidelines imply an extremely
challenging and rigorous standard."
   He said the board had rejected a recommendation by its own advisory
committee to water down the definition of "proficient" it uses on its
statewide exam.
   The state board's new plan will leave intact California's Academic
Performance Index, the ranking that sets achievement goals tailored to
each school and rewards improvement.
   The federal mandate also requires yearly improvement but sets a
single
target -- 100 percent proficiency by 2014. California will now send
the
federal government an annual report telling which schools are making
adequate yearly progress.
   For high school students, results will depend on tenth-grade
performance
on California's new exit exam. The federal law requires only one high
school grade to be tested.
   "It's a very ambitious goal," said Chuck Weis, chairman of the
state
board's advisory team on No Child Left Behind. "It's saying that all
kids
will have to pass a graduation test by tenth grade."
   For grades 2 though 8, results will be based on the California
Standards
Test, which measures how well students have learned the standards --
subjects the state has decided kids should know at each grade.
   At Lincoln Middle School in Alameda, for example, just 53 percent
of
sixth- graders scored proficient or above. In the same grade, 21
percent
of disabled students met the goal, and just 14 percent of
English-learners
did so.
   But Lincoln was a winner on California's own Academic Performance
Index.
It met all state-required targets this year and would have qualified
for
cash rewards if the state had enough money to give them.
   Nevertheless, if Lincoln does not continually raise the number of
"proficient" students each year, it would be listed as an
underperformer,
and federal sanctions would kick in.
   If it missed targets one year, the Alameda City school district
would have
to let students attend a school that did meet targets -- even if it
were
full. If it missed targets two years in a row, the district would have
to
pay for after-school tutors.
   Some critics charge that the government has made the hurdles so high
that
even good schools will be labeled failures -- adding fuel to the
private
school voucher movement.
   State board President Hastings predicted the outcry among states
would be
so great that the rules would change. He said the requirement that all
English- learners score at a proficient level was mathematically
impossible to meet because English-proficient kids are no longer
classified as English-learners.
   Jack O'Connell, the state's newly elected schools superintendent,
tried to
look on the bright side. He said the new requirements would provide
more
data that could be used to improve.
   "This is the right way to go in an imperfect world," he said.

   E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com. 
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Copyright 2003 SF Chronicle

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