No Child Left Behind Continues To Frustrate

The article below appeared in the Thursday, November 13, 2008 Edition of The St. Albans Messenger and was written by Fairfax Messenger Correspondent Lisa M. Boucher:

No Child Left Behind Continues To Frustrate

By LISA M. BOUCHER
Messenger Correspondent
FAIRFAX — The benefits and drawbacks of a federal education law enacted to measure student progress continues to be a topic of debate in educational circles.

Area school administrators, asked to discuss specifics, recently addressed a number of frustrations with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) approach.

Take, for example, the fact that Bellows Free Academy, Fairfax did not meet Adequate Yearly
Progress (AYP) for students with disabilities this year.

Because this is its second year as a "failing" school in that regard, BFA is required to set aside some of its Title I federal funding to pay for tutoring services for students who qualify and want to utilize the service.

It should be noted, however, that to qualify for the mandated services, students must also be eligible for free and reduced meals, thereby excluding those children who do not meet the income requirement from receiving extra help.

These kinds of oddities in the system take some parents by surprise and still others may wonder wondering what the impact is of labeling schools and students to begin with.

Armando Vilaseca, superintendent at Franklin West Supervisory Union and one of three finalist for state education commissioner, was asked about this and other NCLB issues.

"If my son is in a clean, safe environment and for the most part, I know he's getting a good education, in my mind that's not a failing school," Vilaseca said. "But then I get a report that says the school didn't meet these requirements. It's almost incongruent from what I see to what the report says. It sends a mixed message to parents."

Vilaseca and supervisory union curriculum coordinator, Mary Lynn Riggs believe NCLB has put BFA in a position to look more closely at students not meeting the standards. That they agree, is not a bad thing.

They pointed out that BFA has programs in place for students who need extra assistance. There are callback services in the elementary and middle school through which students identified as needing additional help attend a targeted class during one of their unified arts class periods.

But the improvements are not always readily visible to the public, according to the school superintendent.

"If a student misses the standard by 30 points in the third grade, but only misses it by one point in the fourth, he doesn't get any credit for making incredible gains that year," he said. He’s still considered failing even though he worked harder than the student who may have dropped points, but still met the standard."
Under NCLB, states can set their own standards for proficiency. Vermont has set its standards high, according to Riggs, who noted that the NECAP test is particularly challenging.

The expectations at the fourth grade level, as far as processing and understanding what to do with the information given, is equivalent to what would have been expected of a sixth grader or higher 25 years ago.

The NCLB Act of 2001 is the latest incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first enacted in 1965 and last reauthorized in 1994.

NCLB was supported by the Bush administration, civil rights activists and some Democratic legislators, including U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

The intent was to shine a light on how well schools were educating all children regardless of race, ethnicity, disability, or socio-economic status, with a final goal of having all students meet proficiency standards by 2014.

Schools not making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward the goal of universal proficiency are considered failing. The school can fail to make AYP if all students or if just a subgroup of students doesn't make progress.

If a school does not meet AYP for two years in a row, it must then appropriate some of its Title I federal funds for supplemental educational services (SES) to help those students.

One complaint voiced by Jack McCarthy, superintendent of Franklin Northwest Supervisory Union, is that the NCLB system was designed for urban schools and punishes large, rural schools, which have more subgroups than their smaller counterparts.

If a school has less than 40 students in a subgroup, then the scores of that subgroup are not considered when determining performance. Many schools in Vermont are small and have few or no students in some categories.

If a school continues to "fail" according to the law, it may be required to replace staff or administration, invest in a new curriculum, hire a private management contractor, or covert to a charter school.

Under NCLB, states may take over the management of failing schools.

Supt. Vilaseca said, "The problem I have is how do you call a school a failing school when it's doing so many things that are beneficial to kids, but because one test says a kid didn't make the grade, it determines the school is a failing school."

Students with documented learning disabilities as well as students with other disabilities who attend public school are tested and scored in the same manner as all other students. As experience has shown, these students often score below the norms and put a school in the red flag zone, through no fault of their own.

"It's an odd system," said Vilaseca, pointing out another difficulty. "If we have fourth graders taking the test this year ... next year we're testing a completely different set of fourth graders then comparing one group to another."

He added that no two groups of students are alike, so it doesn't make sense to compare their test scores.

"What we should be doing is comparing one student [to himself or herself], that makes more sense. If a kid scores 50 in fourth grade, for example, then the goal for fifth grade should be 60. We should be using a growth model, comparing individual progress." NCLB opened up the possibility that parents would shop around for schools, moving their children from an underperforming school to a better one within their district.

Even if Vermont parents lived in a district where they had a number of schools from which to choose, what would be achieved by the migration of those students?

"If people who have the money start pulling their kids out of public schools and sending them to parochial or private schools, you're are getting less money because schools are funded on a per-pupil basis," Vilaseca said.

"Your needs haven't gone away—if anything you now have more kids with needs because you have a less lieterogenous population," he added. "Less money, less kids, less confidence—it's a downward spiral that causes a school to end up with less money to deal with the same issues."