Schools Struggle to Meet NCLB Dictates

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

FAILING SCHOOLS STRAIN TO MEET U.S. STANDARDS

New York Times -- October 16, 2007 -- Page One
by Diana Jean Schemo

Los Angeles -- As the director of high schools in the gang-infested 
neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo 
struggles every day with educational dysfunction.

For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her 
district’s teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or 
English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 
students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could.

For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind 
law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing 
teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a 
private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major 
overhaul in governance.

But more than 1,000 of California’s 9,500 schools are branded chronic 
failures, and the numbers are growing. Barring revisions in the law, 
state officials predict that all 6,063 public schools serving poor 
students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014, when the law 
requires universal proficiency in math and reading.

“What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Paramo asked. “Shut down every school?”

With the education law now in its fifth year — the one in which its more 
severe penalties are supposed to come into wide play — California is not 
the only state overwhelmed by growing numbers of schools that cannot 
satisfy the law’s escalating demands.

In Florida, 441 schools could be candidates for closing. In Maryland, 
some 49 schools in Baltimore alone have fallen short of achievement 
targets for five years or more. In New York State, 77 schools were 
candidates for restructuring as of last year.

Some districts, like those in New York City, have moved forcefully to 
shut large failing high schools and break them into small schools. Los 
Angeles, too, is trying small schools, along with other innovations, and 
David L. Brewer III, its schools superintendent, has just announced 
plans to create a “high priority district” under his direct control made 
up of 40 problem schools.

Yet so far, education experts say they are unaware of a single state 
that has taken over a failing school in response to the law. Instead, 
most allow school districts to seek other ways to improve.

“When you have a state like California with so many schools up for 
restructuring,” said Heinrich Mintrop, an education professor at the 
University of California, Berkeley, “that taxes the capacity of the 
whole school change industry.”

As a result, the law is branding numerous schools as failing, but not 
producing radical change — leaving angry parents demanding redress. 
California citizens’ groups have sued the state and federal government 
for failing to deliver on the law’s promises.

“They’re so busy fighting No Child Left Behind,” said Mary Johnson, 
president of Parent U-Turn, a civic group. “If they would use some of 
that energy to implement the law, we would go farther.”

Ray Simon, the deputy federal secretary of education, said states that 
ignored the law’s demands risked losing federal money or facing 
restrictions on grants. For now, Mr. Simon said, the department is more 
interested in helping states figure out what works than in punishment. 
“Even a state has to struggle if it takes over a school,” he said.

A federal survey last year showed that in 87 percent of the cases of 
persistently failing schools, states and school districts avoided 
wholesale changes in staff or leadership. That is why, Mr. Simon said, 
the Bush administration is proposing that Congress force more action by 
limiting districts’ options in responding to hard-core failure.

In California, Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of schools, 
calls the law’s demands unreasonable. Under the federal law, 700 schools 
that California believed were getting substantially better were counted 
last year as failing. A state takeover of schools, Mr. O’Connell said, 
would be a “last option.”

“To have a successful program,” he said, “it really has to come from the 
community.”

Under the No Child law, a school declared low-performing for three years 
in a row must offer students free tutoring and the option to transfer. 
After five years, such schools are essentially treated as irredeemable, 
with the law prescribing starting over with a new structure, new 
leadership or new teachers. But it also gives schools the option of less 
sweeping changes, like reducing school size or changing who is in charge 
of hiring.

Those in charge of troubled schools in Los Angeles admit that the 
absence of serious penalties coupled with the growing number of schools 
branded as low-performing is breeding bitterness. But they are not sure 
what to do.

Carmen Schroeder, the superintendent of District 5 — and Ms. Paramo’s 
boss — has taken over hiring decisions and keeps a close watch on the 
lowest performing schools. Ms. Schroeder said she would like to go 
further and shut some down if there were any place to transfer the students.

That is not so easy when 59 of the 91 schools in her district, the 
largest of eight in this sprawling city, consistently fall short of 
standards.

Beyond that, the federal law does not trump contract agreements, and so 
teachers have generally not lost their jobs or faced transfer when 
schools stagnate.

In Los Angeles, as the law’s 2014 deadline draws nearer, the promised 
land of universal high achievement seems more distant than ever.

Schools that serve low-income students are packed, despite new 
construction. In poor neighborhoods, students are on staggered 
schedules, starting school in different months and scattering what was 
once summer vacation into smaller breaks.

Students lose momentum, forget lessons and come out with 17 fewer days 
of instruction a year. “That’s why our kids are not passing the high 
school exit exams,” said Ms. Johnson of Parent U-Turn.

Not all states are facing huge numbers of failing schools. Some were 
late establishing testing systems, and so lack results over five or more 
years. Others may have small poor populations, better teaching or easier 
exams.

But the tensions voiced here are echoed by parents elsewhere, as well as 
by school officials.

At Woodrow Wilson High one recent morning, teachers broke into small 
groups over coffee studying test scores for areas of weakness. But there 
were limits to what they would learn.

The teachers analyzed results for the entire school, not for their own 
students. Roberto Martinez, the principal, said he had not given 
teachers the scores of their own students because their union objects, 
saying the scores were being used to evaluate teachers.

“And who suffers?” asked Veronica Garcia, an English teacher at Wilson. 
“The kids suffer, because the teacher never gets feedback.”

A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, said the union 
supported test score reviews provided they did not affect teachers’ 
jobs. Mr. Duffy said the federal law glossed over the travails of 
teaching students living in poverty. “Everyone agrees that urban 
education needs a shot in the arm, but it is not as bleak as the 
naysayers would have it,” he said.

That is not a view shared by many parents. Martha Sanchez, whose three 
children attend public schools here, said that as students grew older, 
the schools seemed to give up.

Her eldest, Gonzalo, attends eighth grade at John Adams Middle School, 
where only 22 percent of students passed the state exams in English and 
math this year. It is not hard for Ms. Sanchez to see why.

When Gonzalo struggled over equations, she said, his teacher called him 
slow rather than going over the material again. Ms. Sanchez said that 
she had complained, but that the teacher had denied the comment. It was 
only through the private tutoring, available under No Child Left Behind 
that he managed to pass seventh grade math, she said.

The principal, Joseph P. Santana, said he did not recall Ms. Sanchez’s 
complaining, but could not rule it out. “There are 1,600 of them,” he 
said, referring to the students, “and only one of me.”

Still, Ms. Sanchez is not a big fan of the law. Just weeks into the 
school year, she said, teachers are focusing almost solely on material 
likely to appear on state exams. Forget about igniting a passion in 
children, she said.

“Maybe the system is not designed for people like us,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/education/16child.html