Education report to a member of Congress

Hernando County and NCLB: Mandate for Drastic Change

The Hon. Ginny Brown-Waite

North Main Street

Sincerely,

Hernando County's Current NCLB Situation

The Hernando County Situation in a Larger Context

National Commentary on NCLB

2004 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Report -District Level, Hernando

1004 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Report, Hernando

FCAT Grades and AYP Status, Hernando County Schools

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act has stamped modern American education with the mark of mediocrity. In mandating that all school districts in the nation live up to a set of standards or lose important Title 1 funding for their disadvantaged schools, and by imposing sanctions that are draconian in their effects, the federal government is imposing the will of Congress on the choices of parents. In addition, the dissonant requirement that states set their own standards creates disparity of a magnitude unimaginable before the federal government decided to intrude into this most important, not to say intimate, local issue between children, parents and those who are entrusted to educate those children. The effect of the NCLB act is, so far, to encourage a lowering of standards -- a march toward educational mediocrity -- in the service of satisfying federal demands that are counterproductive at best, destructive of American education at worst. Title 1 funding may be important to many schools nationwide, and it is important to some Hernando County schools. But what is more important is the quality of education, not the calculation of test scores, particularly in light of the all-or-nothing character of assessment for NCLB passing or failing grades. Before the situation becomes desperate, a solution is offered here, based on some of the best educational writing locally and nationally, to opt out of a lose-lose situation before irreparable harm is done. In addition, Congress should be lobbied to repeal the act so that no district in the nation need suffer the intrusion, and the extreme sanctions, imposed by the NCLB.

Introduction

Seven out of ten Hernando County elementary schools earned A ratings on Florida's 2004 school grades released in early June, 2004. At three of those schools, students also managed to make the required AYP, adequate yearly progress, according to the federal No Child Left Behind act (NCLB). (Bacon 2004) Of all the county's schools, 18 of 20 did not meet the standard, although just seven will face the consequences mandated by NCLB, mainly because " Congress imposed its rules only on those schools that receive significant federal funding, the Title I program for low-income campuses" (Solocheck 2004).

At the county's middle schools, the federally mandated 'ratings game' played out particularly badly. Only three out of all the county's middle schools met the AYP, although only one, Deltona Elementary, is a Title 1 school. In addition, five other county schools that receive Title 1 funding must allow their students to transfer to a better performing school because they failed to meet their AYP for a second year. (Bacon 2004)

That situation, without embellishment, is dire enough. Transporting children to schools farther from their homes is costly. Parents don't like it. It would also stand to reason that at least some of any gains the student experienced from attending the 'better' school might be lost in travel fatigue and stress caused by leaving familiar classmates, teachers and neighborhood. In short, the quality of life costs of this portion of NCLB stand to be substantial.

But worse still is that the county was hoisted on its own petard, or rather, a combination of its petard and that of Gov. Jeb Bush (leaving out entirely for the moment the governor's brother.) Because the NCLB allows states to set their own standards for achievements to be measured under NCLB, and Florida's is set relatively high (Governor Bush made that call), more of its students will fail to meet AYP than will the students in states that set very low standards for AYP. (Bacon 2004) Moreover, the state's own FCAT scores would lead observers to believe that the state's schools were, in fact, making progress toward better education. (Bacon, 2004)

In addition to the very cogent educational issues involved with NCLB, and the distressing life quality issues, there are also the funding issues. NCLB is a federal mandate without federal funding by and large; estimates put budget increases needed to cope with all the aspects of NCLB as high as 24% (Schrag 2004, 38+).

It is clear that Hernando County schools are in a distressing position regarding NCLB, and that some workable solutions must be found or the education of children in the county. This report proposes to find a workable solution by thoroughly researching the possibilities under NCLB and those external to it.

First, the report will present Hernando County statistics, and comments and concerns of Hernando County education officials and other concerned parties. Second, it will review the literature regarding both problems with and solutions to problems with NCLB. Third, it will make a recommendation for how Hernando County can best proceed to serve its student/parent population.

Hernando County's Current NCLB Situation

Hernando County experienced significant failures in terns of AYP in its middle schools, and officials were looking for explanations. One, the assistant principal at Fox Chapel Middle School, said a large amount of teacher turnover may have contributed to the lower grade. In addition, he noted that the population of the school had also changed. It had become a Title 1 school "with 50 percnet of our students on free or reduced lunch." (Bacon 2004)

Worse news was that even adding extra resource teachers, which might help, would be problematical, as the school has no room for them. But that could be a moot point if, in fact, a large number of students chose to transfer to better-performing schools, something NCLB gives them the right to do at any school that fails two years in a row. In fact, 60 students have already chosen to change schools next fall. (Bacon 2004) Under the NCLB at, "Title 1 schools must offer school choice if their subgroups -- whether poor, learning disabled, black, Hispanic or of limited English skills -- fail to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years" (Bacon 2004). The NCLB law states that priority in school choice be given to the lowest-achieving children from low-income families, "and that they be allowed to select from among schools not identified as needing improvement under No Child Left Behind" (Solocheck). NCLB also states that the school district must offer at least two choices for transfer (Solocheck 2004), but in a district with the vast majority of schools failing, such as this one, the problem for school administrators then becomes how to offer two choices that are not for equally 'non-performing' schools. Hernando did not "want to give choices that would have youngsters taking lengthy bus rides across the count" (Solocheck 2004), doubtless for both fiscal and family reasons.

Under the NCLB act, it is not enough for a school to meet its AYP in most areas; it must meet them in all or fail. This is the explanation for a district having an overall 90% rate of meeting AYP, and yet have specific schools fail and even risk loss of Title 1 funding. Following is a table of the grades of Hernando County Schools in 2003 and 3004, and a Yes or No for meeting their AYP in 2004:

Table 1:

FCAT Grades and AYP Status, Hernando County Schools

SCHOOL GRADE/2003 GRADE/2004 AYP

Brooksville AB No

Chocachatti AA Yes

Deltona

Eastside AA No

Floyd

Moton

Pine Grove

Spring Hill

Suncoast

Westside

Fox Chapel

Dolores

Powell

West Hernando

Central

Hernando

Nature Coast

Springstead

Source: Hernando Today.com/Bacon 2004

In some respects, the results look a lot worse than they really are. Some schools failed to meet AYP because they had inadequate number of students tested in one or more of the nine subgroups. Some schools that ordinarily perform well failed to meet the NCLB standards simply because of the federal accountability formula that mandates that 95% of all students in each subgroup in each grade must be tested. For example, Hernando Elementary, which serves only kindergarten through second grade students, failed because only 94% of he special education students were tested in reading and language, and only 92% in mathematics, falling short of the mandated 95%. (Long 2004) Similarly, Oak Grove Central failed to meet the 2003 AYP because of similarly non-compliance in testing percentages in the same areas. In addition, tests were given in one instance "but some were not scored due to a procedural error" (Long 2004). "If even one group fails, the entire school fails" (Solocheck 2004)

AYP also measures improvement of students from one grade level to the next, such as from second to third grades. In the schools tested, none of the third grades have assistants because the Florida Department of Education had decided several years ago that kindergarten though second grade should have assistants; this required all the available funding. However, new school equity funding at the state level could free up as much as $3.4 million to pay for resource materials, textbooks and so on. (Long 2004)

The Hernando County Situation in a Larger Context

Under the state's own grading system (see chart above), almost half of Florida's schools earned As. But under the NCLB act's requirements, almost 80 were found to need improvement (Matus and Waite 2004). Gov. Jeb Bush explained it by saying the tests "measure different things" (Matus and Waite 2004) Frances Marine, a Florida Department of Education spokeswoman offered an analogy to explain it:

All-Star basketball player dunks, rebounds and nails 3-pointers with ease, but his free throw shooting is poor. In the same way, an A school may need to focus more attention on its students with limited English skills. (Matus and Waite 2004)

Unfortunately, her analogy is flawed. The basketball player wouldn't be trying to improve his free-throw shooting because he is valuable enough to the team as he is, and no one can be all things to all people. Public schools do, however, need to be all things to all people. In that part of her analogy, she is correct; under NCLB the school may need to improve its work with students with limited English skills, or low-income students, or any other population group.

This obviously would make it easier for states with fewer varied population groups.

Matus and Waite note that, ironically, it was Gov. Bush "who decided how stringently No Child would be applied in Florida, which has a far higher percentage of schools failing to meet federal standards than most states" (2004). Florida decided, with the governor's urging, that each of the subgroups counted under NCLB could be as small as 30 students. This means it does not take many students with poor scores to lower the mean and median scores of the group. "With most states, subgroups are bigger, so fewer schools get snared," Matus and Waite noted (2004).

National Commentary on NCLB

President George W. Bush has often claimed a sort of conservative successorship to President Ronald Reagan. However, this sort of intrusive activity of the federal government in a local issue -- schools "is 'exactly the kind of thing (former President Ronald) Reagan preached against'," according to Matus and Waite (2004).

While the education press is filled to the brim with interim, partial and stop-gap solutions to some parts of NCLB, as a look at the relevant Web sites instantly reveals, the national press -- particularly respected commentary publications -- has spent a lot of ink in putting the NCLB firmly where it belongs, tagged as "probably the most sweeping nationalization of school policy in the nation's history" according to an article in The American Prospect (Schrag 2004, 38+). Formally, the article noted, it was just an extension of the Johnson Era Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

Next to the gentle prodding of education toward a new century that characterized the 1965 act, the mandates of the NCLB act are draconian. Schrag sets them out in context. He notes the law's basic objectives, as well as the consequences of failing to meet those objectives.

First, says Schrag, the NCBL was meant to:

Create an accountability system of tests, graduation rates, and other indicators that would force individual schools and districts to make adequate yearly progress by raising not only school-wide test scores but the achievement levels of every major subgroup of students -- African-Americans, Latinos, English language learners, low-income students, special-education students -- to a state-defined level of proficiency. (2004)

That doesn't sound too far from the U.S. Department of Education claim that it merely wants greater accountability for testing results nationwide. (U.S. Dept. Of Education Web site)

However, schools that don't, according to testing, make progress for two years running in each group in each subject and grade (emphasis mine) will be forced into "Program Improvement," which in turn leads to escalating sanctions and "interventions including, ultimately, a state takeover until progress targets are met. (Schrag 2004, 38+)

Second, the NCLB requires schools and districts to issue report cards on themselves, providing data on the performance and quality of each school. This is the aspect that makes it possible for children from low-performing schools to transfer to better ones, with the district forced to provide transportation. Extra help would be provided for those who need it. Schrag notes that this means students wouldn't have to stay trapped in the nation's most horrible schools. Neither would Bush's original desire, private-school vouchers. HE got the transfer option instead from Congress. (Schrag 2004, 38+) But then, there is no statute, yet, saying private schools would have to accept the bad-school fleeing population just because they had vouchers; the real problem might have been whether the students had the grades or ability for private school, and whether the schools had room and, being private, wanted to take in the bad-school escapees.

Finally, the NCLB act required that school districts provide the necessary resources, especially "highly qualified teachers" in every classroom by the 2005-2006 school year. President Bush agreed to a 27% increase in Elementary and Secondary Education Act funding, to $22 billion the first year and more later. So far, it has fallen significantly short of that amount. (Schrag 2004)

So far, the problems with the NCLB act concern nationalization of schools and imposition of requirements that have fiscal requirements currently under-funded by the federal government, despite promises. There is another problem, however, that may be the single worst one for education per se. While ensuring that all districts will have a hard time dealing with the requirements of the act itself, it also allowed each state to set its own proficiency standards and teacher-excellence standards. So, some states created tough standards to live up to, and others chose the easier path. "Thus while Michigan reported that some 1,500 schools (40% of all the state's public ones) failed to make their adequate yearly progress goals in 2000-01, Arkansas and Wyoming, with lower proficiency standards, reported none" (Schrag 2004, 38+). He added that because "NCLB imposes costly remedial requirements on districts with large numbers of what are officially called underperforming schools, it creates strong incentives for states with high standards to lower them" (, 38+ 2004). The conclusion is obvious: NCLB may ensure that no child is left behind, but it may do it by ensuring that no student is actually required to learn anything. It seems unlikely that states that find themselves losing their federal Title 1 money would choose not to lower their standards.

Even that, however, might not get them completely out of the woods. Testing 95% of all subgroups in all grades is a challenge. In high schools, a 90% attendance rate is extraordinary. While that may not be desirable, it is a fact of life that districts deal with day after day, and one that could help shove the district into a "federally mandated shape up program" even if the school is good one in every way except attendance. Should any of this occur, then the principal and teachers are subject to reassignment after four years. (, 38+ 2004) This last facet of the sanctions is more than draconian; it is a violation of First Amendment rights vis-a-vis due process, and it wouldn't be surprising if an attorney made the case that it was basically government conscription. After all, by that point, the teachers in question would be virtually working for the federal government that does not have the right to tell private citizens where they may work.

The requirements of the law have already been amended, so it is possible that these more Machiavellian mandates might change. And there is the possibility that the law may be interpreted by the U.S. Department of Education on a state-by-state basis. For example, California and Illinois have received wavers concerning treatment of scores of students who arrive in the district speaking little English. When those students become proficient in English, they are then, under NCLB, redesignated as "English proficient" and they are no longer counted in the English-learner category. So, the better a school is at teaching English to non-English speakers, may not be able to show the required progress year to year in that category because those who have improved the most simply are moved out of it. " 'It feels like you're being set up,' said a veteran school administrator and federal official who is now a superintendent in a large city with a mushrooming immigrant population" (, 38+ 2004).

Two years ago, NEA Today asked four experienced educators for their reactions to the proposed mandates of the NCLB act. Here, mainly paraphrased, are some of their responses: