Fwd: [arn2-strategy] Florida Ed. Commissioner Threatens to Ignore NCLB Restructuring Mandate

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

More resistance.
Susan

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
> Date: Sun Jul 2, 2006  12:22:39 PM US/Pacific
> To: FCARForum@yahoogroups.com, ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>, 
>  arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [arn2-strategy] Florida Ed. Commissioner Threatens to Ignore 
> NCLB Restructuring Mandate
> Reply-To: arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com
>
> FEDERAL STANDARDS PUT SCHOOLS IN QUANDARY
>
> FLORIDA'S EDUCATION CHIEF MIGHT DEFY THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LAW
> UNLESS FEDERAL OFFICIALS TAKE A MORE MODERATE STANCE ON SCHOOL
> ACCOUNTABILITY RULES
>
>    Miami Herald -- July 2, 2006
>           by Matthew I. Pinzur
>
> More than 500 high-poverty Florida schools could be forced under the
> federal No Child Left Behind law to privatize, become charters, replace
> most of their staffs or make other major changes -- even though some
> have repeatedly received A or B grades from the state.
>
> A handful of low-performing schools have already faced that choice 
> under
> Florida's own education accountability laws. But it could become far
> more widespread next year unless those schools make unprecedented gains
> on the state's high-stakes standardized test.
>
> ''This calls for a drastic change of culture, an entirely new
> environment,'' said Rod Paige, the former U.S. secretary of education
> who oversaw the creation of No Child Left Behind in 2001.
>
> But Florida's education commissioner suggested in an interview Friday
> that he may defy the federal law -- and risk losing millions in funding
> -- if he cannot convince Congress or federal education officials to 
> take 
> a more moderate stance.
>
> ''My first duty is to the state of Florida's accountability system; I
> will act accordingly,'' Education Commissioner John Winn told The Miami
> Herald. ``I'd be hard pressed to demand an A school make wholesale
> restructuring.''
>
> No Child Left Behind created a ladder of penalties for schools that 
> fail
> to meet federal standards. The strongest sanction forces a school to
> plan for dramatic restructuring if it falls short for five consecutive
> years. If it fails a sixth time, that plan must be immediately 
> implemented.
>
> In Florida, 535 public schools have missed the goal -- known as 
> Adequate
> Yearly Progress -- for four years. And because AYP standards become 
> more
> difficult every year, the percentage of schools making it dropped this
> year from 36 to 28 percent.
>
> It will likely drop further as the targets soar toward 100 percent
> proficiency. Within a few years, Paige said, huge numbers of urban
> schools will confront restructuring.
>
> ''It would seem the day of reckoning is coming,'' said Jack Jennings,
> president of the Center on Education Policy, an independent
> public-school advocacy group in Washington.
>
> The federal government's jurisdiction over schools is limited. The No
> Child penalties apply only to the high-poverty schools that receive
> federal money under Title I. But that list includes hundreds of South
> Florida schools. Seventy-nine schools in Miami-Dade County and 32 in
> Broward have already missed AYP for four consecutive years.
>
>         HIALEAH SCHOOL EYED
>
> Among those is Palm Springs Elementary, a Hialeah school of more than
> 900 students that has received A grades from the state since 2003.
>
> ''A staff that's been successful and helped maintain an A school -- why
> would you restructure it?'' asked Roxana Herrera, who recently became
> Palm Springs' principal.
>
> The apparent disconnect between Florida's school grades and federal AYP
> is rooted in the two systems' completely different way of interpreting
> student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
>
> The school grades are determined almost entirely on two factors: what
> percentage of students scored a 3 or higher that year on the FCAT's
> five-level scale and what percentage improved their score since the
> prior year.
>
> No Child Left Behind measures what percentage of students in various
> demographic groups are scoring at least a 3 on the exam, which is
> considered proficient. The target percentage increases every year until
> 2014, when 100 percent of students must be proficient.
>
> If any one of the nine demographic groups misses the target, the entire
> school fails to make AYP. At Palm Springs, for example, the school
> failed to make AYP in 2004 because only 28 percent of special-education
> students had proficient reading scores -- the goal that year was 31 
> percent.
>
> ''You've got A or B schools that out of 39 criteria has missed one,''
> Winn said. ``To restructure that school based on that, I'm going to be
> hard pressed to get on the bandwagon regarding that.''
>
> There are a handful of loopholes in the rule, but the basic message
> never changes: Within the next decade, all public-school students in 
> the
> country must be proficient at reading and math.
>
> ''There's a lot of states that aren't yet focused on it, and that's
> because the numbers have [not] been overwhelming, but they're
> building,'' Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Tom Luce said,
> speaking June 2 at an education reporters' conference in New Orleans.
>
>         HOPING FOR A CHANGE
>
> Indeed, Winn has pinned his hopes on changes to the law. No Child Left
> Behind needs congressional reauthorization in 2007, and Winn said he
> hopes the rules will be changed to account for differing levels of
> achievement instead of the yes-or-no system that now exists.
>
> But the law will not be changed in time for next year's exams. Without 
> a
> quick change, he said, the 2007 results will be ``a train wreck.''
>
> To avoid it, Winn wants federal officials to approve a ''growth 
> model,''
> which would allow schools to make AYP even if they fall short of the
> goals, as long as their students are on pace to catch up. Such a model
> was rejected this year, but Florida was encouraged to tweak its plan 
> and
> reapply.
>
> Without it, Winn said, many schools will fall further and further from
> the federal goals.
>
> ''It's like me playing golf -- I throw up my hands and say I'm never
> going to make it,'' Winn said. ``We've never raised [Florida's system]
> to the level of hopelessness, but I think we're on the tipping point of
> that for No Child Left Behind.''
>
> Gov. Jeb Bush has long insisted there is no contradiction between the
> two systems, but this spring he said Florida's system was more 
> effective.
>
> ''That's no disrespect to anybody in Washington, D.C,'' Bush said June
> 14. ``I believe our system [school grades] is the most comprehensive
> system of measuring how schools are doing based on student learning.''
>
> Local districts, meanwhile, are left with little guidance about what to
> do if federal law tells them to restructure dozens or hundreds of 
> schools.
>
> ''This has always been a problem, the idea of putting public school
> systems in a vise between their own state requirements and No Child 
> Left
> Behind,'' Miami-Dade Superintendent Rudy Crew said. ``If the state and
> federal government will get on the same page, it will avoid districts
> being at risk of being in this conflicting environment altogether.''
>
> A few states began measuring AYP earlier than Florida and have already
> breached restructuring. California recently dealt with 271 schools, and
> Michigan had 133.
>
> But according to Jennings' group, the vast majority elected for the
> vaguest of the law's requirements: ``Undertaking any other major
> restructuring of the school's governance that produces fundamental 
> reform.''
>
> In Michigan, for example, those plans included reorganizing the 
> school's
> governance and changing the curriculum -- strategies often used in
> Florida for schools that repeatedly earn F grades.
>
> While those plans seem less drastic than the law's other options, the
> Center on Education Policy's study of Michigan suggests they work:
> Eighty-five percent of the state's restructured schools made AYP the
> following year.
>
>         TOUGH TALK
>
> ''What happens with politicians is that they talk tough when they sign
> laws and pass laws, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's how the 
> law
> is going to be implemented,'' Jennings said.
>
> But as AYP becomes more difficult to achieve, internal reforms may not
> be enough. Moreover, the law says little about what happens to schools
> that continue to miss AYP after the sixth year.
>
> Paige said policy-makers and public pressure will likely force those
> schools to confront the more draconian options.
>
> ''I'm not surprised they're looking first to these kinds of steps,''
> said Paige, now chairman of Chartwell Education Group, a consulting
> firm. ``But eventually, I think it is going to go to the kinds of 
> things
> conceptualized in the legislation.''
>
>    http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/14950085.htm
>
>
>
>
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