One-Third of States Seek NCLB Changes

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

The depth of the criticism of NCLB and the breadth of the opposition 
grows with every story.

14 STATES ASK U.S. TO REVISE SOME EDUCATION LAW RULES
New York Times -- March 25, 2005
by Diana Jean Schemo

Washington -- Fourteen states asked the Bush administration on Wednesday 
for permission to use alternative methods for showing academic gains 
under the No Child Left Behind law.

The 14 states, most of which had their own systems for raising academic 
performance in place before the federal No Child Left Behind law took 
effect two years ago, charged that as currently written, the law would 
brand too many schools "in need of improvement," and thus squander 
limited resources.

The states, including Alaska, California and Connecticut, said that 
schools showing academic gains under their statewide system should 
escape the failing designation under the federal law, even if that 
progress falls short of the law's requirements.

They asked for permission to use "growth models," in which schools would 
avoid the federal law's remedies and penalties if they showed academic 
gains, even if those gains fell short of the amount required for all 
students to reach academic proficiency by 2014, as the law mandates.

In a letter to Education Secretary Rod Paige, the 14 chief state school 
officers wrote that "without any changes to the law, calculations 
suggest that within a few years, the vast majority of all schools will 
be identified as in need of improvement. Many of those schools will be 
given that designation despite having shown steady and significant 
improvement for all groups of students."

The appeal comes as more and more states have passed resolutions 
criticizing No Child Left Behind, and the federal Education Department 
has moved to give states greater flexibility in carrying out the law. In 
recent months, Dr. Paige has relaxed some of the law's more stringent 
requirements on the testing of children who are learning English and 
disabled children, as well as provisions demanding that schools hire 
only teachers who are qualified for the subjects they are teaching.

The state education chiefs acknowledged that the changes they were 
requesting could not be accommodated within the current law, and asked 
for Congress to revise the law  something that Congress appears 
unlikely to consider this year.

Under the federal education law, states must show steady progress toward 
all students reaching proficiency by 2014. Schools must break down 
results by grade, economic level, ethnicity and disability, with a 
specific percentage of students in each subgroup required to achieve 
grade-level performance until  at least theoretically  all would do so 
by 2014.

Schools in which any subgroup of students, in any grade, fail to reach 
the mark fall short under the federal law. Two years of doing so means 
the schools must offer children the option to transfer to a school that 
is not failing, and pay their transportation costs. After three years, 
they must offer private tutoring. And after five years, the school can 
face closing and new management.

"We have limited resources," said Jack O'Connell, California's 
superintendent of public instruction. "To divert it to things like 
busing doesn't make sense to us."

Eugene Hickok, acting deputy secretary for elementary and secondary 
education, said the kind of changes California and the other states are 
seeking could be granted only if the law were revised. He also said 
estimates that the vast majority of schools would be deemed sub par were 
probably overstated.

While acknowledging "some merit" to Wednesday's suggestion, Mr. Hickok 
said that he did not support revising the education law. Doing so would 
"open up opportunities for all kinds of problems. There are lots of 
people who would like to revisit the statute to gut it."

The schools chiefs also came under immediate fire from the Congressional 
architects of the law, including Representative George Miller of 
California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and 
the Workforce.

Under the growth model that California was proposing, Mr. Miller said: 
"They are sort of always arriving, but they never get there. We want all 
of our fourth-grade children to be proficient in reading and math and 
other subjects. Growth alone can't be good enough."

Representative John A. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is chairman of 
the education committee, also had harsh words. "These changes would gut 
the No Child Left Behind Act and make it easier for states to go back to 
hiding the fact that some children are being denied a quality education, 
even as those states accept billions in increased federal education 
funds," he said. "It's a very bad idea, and it doesn't seem to have 
attracted much support on either side of the aisle in Congress."

In addition to Alaska, California and Connecticut, the states that 
signed the letter were Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, 
Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/education/25CHIL.html