[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Left Far, Far Behind LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-nclb23oct23.story

EDITORIAL

Left Far, Far Behind

Kids and schools are being unfairly punished by overly rigid educational
reform.

 October 23, 2004

 The No Child Left Behind Act was a truly bipartisan effort. Although it is
nice to see such harmony in Washington, that also means neither party is
interested in talking about the school reform measure's serious defects.

 President Bush touts the legislation as a great success, ignoring that it
does more to frustrate schools than to help them. Sen. John F. Kerry is in a
bind. He can't attack the law head-on because he voted for it, and many of
his Democratic colleagues helped create it. So he pretends it would be fine
if only Bush had put more money toward education, as the Democrats wanted.

 Even if Bush had given schools the extra money, this fundamentally flawed
reform would still be choking on its own rigidity and out-of-touch
definition of success. Not only does it unfairly punish thousands of schools
that are making real progress, it actually encourages schools to leave more
students behind.

 That's because the law measures success so strangely, dependent only on
whether a certain number of students each year meet an arbitrary level of
achievement called "proficient" that differs from state to state. In
California, "proficient" is a high bar, defined as being on track to attend
a four-year university. Other states came up with much softer definitions so
they would look better under the law. But that is just one problem with the
proficiency obsession.

 Let's say a teacher starts the year with a classroom full of children whose
skills are woefully low, and by the end of that year most have improved
tremendously. Their spring tests show them going from a rating of "far below
basic" up two big rungs to "basic," one level below "proficient." The
teacher and school get no credit for this remarkable achievement under No
Child Left Behind. The teacher has "failed." In consequence, such teachers,
and the principals of their schools, could ultimately be replaced under the
law.

 A recent Times analysis by reporters Duke Helfand and Doug Smith found that
more than 1,200 California schools that had steadily improved their test
scores nonetheless faced disciplinary measures under No Child Left Behind.
The number is expected to grow to thousands as more students must meet the
"proficient" label in coming years. Wouldn't it make more sense, and say
more about what children are learning, to measure success based on students'
improvement from one year to the next?

 The idea behind having one goal for all was to close the worrisome
achievement gap between disadvantaged students, who tend to bulge at the low
end of the curve, and the more privileged ones. Truth is, the law gives
schools reason to ignore their most troubled students for years ‹ and also
to give short shrift to top achievers.

 One Santa Ana principal told The Times that her school planned to meet its
goal by giving additional instruction to the small group of students who
fell just short of the proficiency bar last year. If they can be brought up
a wee bit, the school will be labeled a success, even if the rest of the
students make little progress. So what about all the students at the bottom
of the heap, who need the extra attention even more?

 And forget about students who already test as proficient, even though with
enriched instruction they might make the leap to advanced. Schools get no
credit for helping these students, who are left out of the federal equation.
Programs for the gifted have been cut back at public schools nationwide as
educators put their time and money toward getting more children to the
proficient level.

 Rewriting the law to encourage reasonable, incremental improvement for all
students would solve these problems and more. It would ease the ridiculous
demand that special-education students must make the same strides as
everyone else toward proficiency. The different definitions of "proficient"
no longer would matter because students would be measured by growth, not by
an imaginary bar. And the law could address the achievement gap by requiring
more growth among the lowest-scoring students.

 Many schools take reform seriously. They are trying like mad ‹ and
improving by any sane definition of the word. They deserve some credit for
it, not punishment.


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