teachers can be canned if special ed students aren't "proficient?" you bet.
in fact, i've heard nothing but bad from VERY GOOD teachers, principals and administrators. we're talking schools and teachers who have won awards of excellence -- but excellence isn't so great in GWB's eyes...
this is an article from my local (wilmington, nc) newspaper that illustrates why educators hate "No Child Left Behind." i don't blame them.
July 20. 2004 12:00AM
Making the grade
By Sam Scott
Staff Writer
[email protected]
Approximately 70 percent of area schools met controversial federal testing standards for student achievement this year, according to results released Monday.
Every district in Southeastern North Carolina showed a marked increase in the number of schools making 100 percent of their goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Pender County led the charge with 80 percent of its schools making "adequate yearly progress," up from 29 percent last year. New Hanover County schools nearly matched that result with 79 percent of schools making the grade.
At 50 percent, Brunswick County had the lowest percentage of schools achieving all their goals, outside of Whiteville's three-school district. Brunswick, however, nearly tripled last year's total number of schools satisfying federal requirements.
Despite the progress, Brunswick Superintendent Eddy Daniel had little good to say about the No Child Left Behind testing system he sees as punitive and unrewarding of individual growth.
"It's a totally negative, 100 percent biased, absolutely false representation of a school's effectiveness," he said.
The federal act passed in 2001 as a way to raise accountability in schools requires that each of up to 10 groups at a school reach the same standard on proficiency tests. The groups are: the school as a whole, white, black, Native American, Asian, Hispanic, multiracial, limited English speakers, disabled and economically disadvantaged.
This year 68.9 percent of each group had to reach grade-level proficiency on reading. And 74.6 percent had to reach proficiency on statewide math tests.
The test is all or nothing. If one group fails either test, the school is considered a failure, no matter how well the student body at large does.
Waccamaw Elementary School, for example, is in most respects a shining jewel in the Brunswick County school system. Last year more than 90 percent of students tested proficient in reading and math, earning distinction from the state as a School of Excellence.
But Waccamaw's approximately 70 special education kids failed to meet their reading goal for a second year, putting the school afoul of No Child Left Behind requirements. The school met each of its other requirements.
So like 10 other schools in the region, Waccamaw is now in "school improvement status." It has to let children transfer to another school if it wants to continue to receive federal Title I funds available to schools with more than 40 percent of the student body on subsidized lunches.
If any of its groups fail reading in each of the next two years, Waccamaw will have to choose from among certain prescribed responses that could include firing staff, turning over operation to the state or a private company, changing the curriculum or lengthening school time.
Schools that do not receive Title I funding are unaffected by the rules.
Even some whose schools did very well in the results noted the system's toughness. Tom Roper, the chairman of the Pender County school board, was elated to hear of the system's performance, but he also said it was hard to achieve perfection in any field, let alone education.
No Left Child Behind will become more demanding next year. The percentage of each group that must reach proficiency will rise more than seven percentage points in reading and more than 6 percentage points in math. Within a decade, each group is supposed to be 100 percent proficient in each subject.
Vann Blake, the principal of Cape Fear Middle School in Pender County, said he'd try his best. But he believes it is wishful thinking to get everybody to grade level. Students with disabilities are, by definition, not likely to get to the level of their peers, he said. And some foreign students show up at age 12 never having gone to school – in their own language, let alone in English.
"They might as well have passed a law that all boys in the eighth grade be more than 6 feet and all girls have less than 5 percent body fat," he said.
His school is on improvement status as students with disabilities again did not reach their target in math. The school as a whole was more than 92 percent proficient in math.
The school sent out letters a week ago letting parents know they could transfer. Nobody had chosen to leave, he said.
