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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, October 14, 2002

No Child Left Behind law a tough test for schools

 •  Previous story: Hawai'i schools affected by new law

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

The state's high-poverty schools face an enormous challenge in meeting the requirements of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind.

While the new law requires steady and continual improvement in math and reading scores on standardized tests at schools with a high number of poor children, there is no high-poverty school in Hawai'i that has hit all of its reading and math goals for the past three years, according to most recent data available from the Department of Education.

Because poverty is considered a major risk factor for children, the No Child Left Behind Act targets schools where at least 45 percent of the student body receive free- or reduced-price lunches, a common measure of poverty. The schools receive federal money to improve learning and, in turn, are expected to demonstrate annual progress in academics.

But Hawai'i education officials say the history of the state's standardized test scores indicates that this annual improvement will be difficult for most schools.

Of the 89 schools that have been designated as high-poverty campuses every year since 1995, 38 have never met the state's academic goals. Schools can come on and off the high-poverty list from year to year depending on the makeup of their student body.

The scores from the Stanford Achievement Test, the standardized test given to schools each spring, also indicate that high-poverty schools are having trouble in mastering reading and math skills at the same time. Schools tend to do well on one or the other, but not both.

And because No Child Left Behind requires increasing levels of improvement at high-poverty schools — until all students achieve proficiency in 2014 — DOE officials say those academic goals will be harder and harder to achieve each year.

"The problems are in reading or math," said Elaine Takenaka, special programs management specialist helping to oversee implementation of the federal law. "For many schools it's hard to focus on both. They might do poorly in reading one year and then work really hard on reading and literacy in the next years. Their reading scores go up, but then their math scores go down.."

Last month 82 Hawai'i high-poverty schools were deemed as "failing," under terms of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, meaning they had failed to meet academic goals for at least two years. Parents of children at those campuses could ask to transfer to better-performing schools; and at campuses that have failed for three or more years, parents could request private tutoring at the state's expense.

Nearly 48,000 of Hawai'i's 183,000 public schoolchildren attend the 82 schools that did not meet the state's academic goals last year.

But there are high-poverty schools that make their academic goals consistently, according to scores from the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Stanford Achievement Test. Schools did not take the test in 2001 because of the three-week teachers strike; scores have not yet been made public for the spring 2002 test.

Likelike School is the high-poverty school that has best met the state's academic standards. It has reached the state's goals every year since 1996.

In the past three years, the school hit every measure — math, reading, attendance and a school-selected goal — all but once, when it didn't improve its math scores in 1998.

Several other high-poverty schools have also met their academic goals.

Kahuku Elementary has met all of its reading, math and attendance goals for the past two years. Ala Wai, Kea'au, Kihei, Kualapu'u and Kapa'a elementary schools, Pa'auilo Elementary and Intermediate and Ho'okena Elementary and Intermediate have made their math and reading goals for the past two years.

The state measures high-poverty schools every year using a system called "Adequate Yearly Progress."

To make progress under Hawai'i Department of Education standards, a school has to have at least 75 percent of its students scoring above average on the reading and math sections of the Stanford Achievement Test, or show a 2 percentage-point gain in the number of students scoring above average. It also had to have 95 percent attendance or a 2 percentage-point gain in attendance over the previous year. Schools can choose a fourth measure such as writing or discipline if they wish to do so, and must show progress in three of the four areas to meet the yearly progress goals.

Almost all of the high-poverty schools failed to hit the state's goal of 95 percent average daily attendance for three straight years, though. Only 28 of 125 managed to do so.

The attendance measure has brought some of the loudest complaints from principals.

Gwen Ueoka, principal at Makawao Elementary on Maui, said her school did not use the optional fourth measure, instead relying on test scores and attendance. Although the school's math and reading scores have been high, Makawao Elementary missed the state's progress goals because it had 93 percent daily attendance, two percentage points below the statewide goal.

"I'm challenged with how to improve something like attendance," Ueoka said. "It's a difficult thing to fix. We're not arguing that it's not important, but it's hard for schools to make great gains in improving that. It's difficult to be in a school that's labeled for corrective action. It's not the achievement scores that have done this to us."

Hitting the attendance goal proved most difficult for Neighbor Island schools. Just three of the 38 high-poverty schools on the Big Island — Kaumana Elementary, Kohala High and Intermediate and Waiakea Waena Elementary — made the 95 percent attendance requirement in 1998, 1999 and 2000. And none of the Maui, Moloka'i or Lana'i schools made their attendance goals in all of those years.

"Schools were saying, one epidemic and that's it," Takenaka said. "Their attendance numbers go down. Every time in Moloka'i it rains heavily and the bridge floods, no one goes to school."

Next year, Hawai'i will remove attendance from the list of measures required to meet yearly progress, instead relying on academic measures only, Takenaka said.

The most major change, though, is that all schools will have to meet a minimum level of proficiency or face the sanctions of No Child Left Behind. Previously, only high-poverty schools that receive federal money had to worry about making a certain minimum level on standardized tests.

"Our intent is to use one accountability system for all schools," said Michael Heim, director of planning and evaluation at the DOE. "It would be total chaos to have two different accountability systems running."

When the results of the first Hawai'i-based standardized test return and go public in November or December, every school in the state will find out where it stands on Adequate Yearly Progress. Test data will be disaggregated for the first time to show how students at each school score across ethnic groups (using census categories of white, black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander), and how students who are high poverty, special education or limited English proficiency are scoring against the general population.

"Some people have complained that in the past we have provided enough data to them," Heim said. "This will be like Christmas for them."

A panel of educators in the past few weeks has been determining "cut scores," which set the marks for whether students fall well below, approach, meet or exceed proficiency. All schools will have to improve scores in reading and math in each student subgroup to meet Adequate Yearly Progress next year.

Hawai'i must submit its new definition of Adequate Yearly Progress to the U.S. Department of Education in January. It will go through a peer review there.

Under No Child Left Behind, all students have to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

"We know what our target is in 2013-2014 is 100 percent proficiency," Heim said. "There should be a gradual progression upward. Given those two pieces of information, every year between now and 2014 we'll have a numerical target. Either you hit it or you don't."

"The metaphor is that you might have 25 different ways to strike out, and if you get one strike, you're out," Heim said. "It's very harsh."