School progress law hard on states

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

At the same time states try to comply with a new federal education law, a lack of information, money and flexibility threatens to derail their efforts, according to a national report released recently.

The study found that nearly a year into attempts to meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act, most states are still struggling with the fine print of the law.

Among the major problems: States with high education expectations are being punished for having stringent standards, while states with low expectations of student performance have an incentive to keep them low so that fewer of their schools wind up on a failing list.

The report, released by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based independent advocacy group for public schools, is the first to look at compliance efforts across the country. It comes just days before the one-year anniversary of President Bush's signing of the law on Jan. 8, 2002.

"The No Child Left Behind Act places greater demands on states and school districts than ever before," the report said. "It remains to be seen how well these demands will be accepted and carried out."

Although Hawai'i education officials predict they might have an easier time complying with the law because there is a single, statewide school district to deal with, their concerns about its impact are being echoed across the country.

"I think that no one wanted to disagree with the concept of No Child Left Behind," Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen said. "The intent may be understood and appreciated, but the harshness of the labeling has more of an effect of undermining public eduction than helping it to improve."

The report said states are having the most trouble with a federal requirement that by Jan. 31 they will have to come up with rules to determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress in student achievement.

Practical and technical dilemmas have caused states to worry that huge numbers of schools will be identified as failing within the first few years of the law. While the law was directed at high-poverty schools that receive additional federal money, every school in the country will have to meet its standards by next fall.

Already in Hawai'i, 82 of the public schools in high-poverty areas have been labeled as needing improvement or being a "corrective action" campus, meaning they have failed to make progress on standardized tests for several years.

Last year, of the schools that had been categorized as high poverty for at least two years, 14 managed to meet their progress goals; 102 did not. It's a pattern that has been repeated for years.

The law asks states to do more than ever before in terms of standardized testing and offering support to schools at a time when most state budgets face severe financial stress, the report said.

Last week, Gov. Linda Lingle announced a 5 percent across-the-board cut on all but the most critical spending by state agencies effectively immediately.

The report also said several states estimate few parents have taken advantage of an option known as school choice. Parents with children in chronically underperforming schools can ask to have them transferred to a campus that better meets state standards.

This year, more than one-fourth of Hawai'i's public 183,000 school children were eligible to transfer to a different campus because they were attending schools that have been labeled as needing improvement.

But just 131 Hawai'i students asked to transfer to other campuses this school year, and the DOE said only about a dozen of those families actually made the move once the transfers were granted.

Hawai'i was cited in the report as an example of the difficulties in offering school choice to families in rural areas. On Moloka'i, where every campus was labeled as failing under the federal definition, students would have to fly to another island to transfer schools.

This is the first year of a six-year study of the No Child Left Behind by the Center on Education Policy. The full report, "From the Capital to the Classroom," can be found at www.ctredpol.org.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools must show progress in both reading and math every year. Additionally, every demographic and racial subgroup at a school also must show progress in both subjects or the entire school will fail to meet the federal requirements.

However, test scores from previous years indicate high-poverty schools have trouble mastering reading and math skills at the same time. Schools tend to do well in one or the other, but not both.

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.