Another "Perverse Consequence" of NCLB

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

FAILING SCHOOLS SUFFER MORE WHEN BETTER STUDENTS TRANSFER
FEDERAL LAW ALLOWS PARENTS TO SHIFT CHILDREN TO BETTER ONES IN COUNTY
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - November 27, 2007
by Akilah Johnson

The No Child Left Behind Act has allowed some Broward County students to 
escape schools that are struggling because of low test scores, causing 
these campuses to suffer further under the federal law meant to improve 
public education, educators say.

Those students with the lowest reading and math scores are getting left 
behind because the law gives students at underperforming schools the 
choice of going elsewhere, the Broward School District reported Monday. 
The brain drain has occurred at about 60 schools, where many of the 
brightest students have transferred out, taking with them federal money 
used to educated poor students.

"This is the crux of the problem," U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, 
D-Weston, said Monday in a roomful of parents, teachers, principals and 
district administrators. "It drains the brains and the life and the 
heart of the struggling schools, who need all of the resources sent 
their way. But we do the opposite."

Wasserman Schultz called Monday's meeting to hear local concerns, so she 
could relay them to her Democratic congressional colleagues as they 
fight to make changes to the federal education program, which is up for 
renewal this year.

No Child Left Behind aims to make sure schools pay attention to all 
students, and particularly to those with low test scores. The federal 
government uses results from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test 
to judge schools on how well specific groups of students are doing — the 
poor, minorities, students with disabilities and those still learning 
English.

If any one of those groups fails to make "adequate yearly progress," the 
entire school is tagged as failing. Any school that doesn't meet that 
mark three years in a row and accepts federal money for poor students 
must give students the option of receiving private tutoring or going to 
a higher-performing public school.

About 3,000 students transferred schools this year and hundreds signed 
up for tutoring. But because more than 30,000 were eligible, the 
district was forced to set aside 20 percent of the $60 million in 
federal funds it uses for such things as after-school programs, to pay 
for the private lessons and bus rides to school.

"A lot of [low-performing] students don't transfer," Bartleman said. 
"And now those schools don't have their total budget to help those 
students."

Many parents did not understand that they were hurting their 
neighborhood school by transferring their children to another campus, 
said School Board member Ben Williams, who has in his district many of 
Broward's so-called "Title I" schools, where more than 50 percent of the 
students are poor. Some parents who keep their children in their 
community schools are somewhat resentful that more is not being done to 
improve their schools, said Williams and Vera Ginn, the district's 
director of Title I programs.

"If you talk to parents in the community, a lot of them don't really 
understand why they would send their kids 'out west' rather than fix or 
make their schools better," Ginn said of the schools in the wealthier 
parts of Broward County that have more resources.

Those parents whose children attend schools that don't receive federal 
funds don't really care about adequate yearly progress and the private 
tutors and campus transfers that come with it, said parent activist 
Jeanne Jusevic. It only becomes an issue, she said, when overcrowded 
schools must absorb students from one that didn't meet federal standards.

Westglades Middle School in Parkland, for example, received about 180 
students from Deerfield Beach Middle and Silver Lakes Middle School in 
North Lauderdale, ballooning its enrollment by 177 students over its 
normal capacity of 1,458.

After Wasserman Schultz asked about the real motivation of parent's 
concerns, Superintendent James Notter said the key to the problem is the 
state-mandated class-size amendment, not students from poorer 
communities transferring schools.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbnclb1127sbnov27,0,2018159.story