A destructive law, no matter how well-intentioned, should be
changed so that it no longer does damage
– particularly if the damage is being done to children. That’s
the case with the No Child Left Behind act, which is financially
punishing the schools that need help.
A destructive law, no matter how well-intentioned, should be changed so that it no longer does damage – particularly if the damage is being done to children. That’s the case with the No Child Left Behind act, which is financially punishing the schools that need help.
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell recommends several changes to California’s “workbook” – our state’s agreement with Washington on how to implement No Child Left Behind.
One unfortunate result of the legislation is that states that set rigorous standards, such as California, tend to be penalized the most. States with lower standards are rewarded.
We support the two major changes O’Connell proposed.
The first tinkers at the edges of our state’s compact. It’s needed because so much money is riding on compliance with the federal bill – $6 billion a year for California. To receive the federal money made available under No Child Left Behind, 95 percent of all subcategories of a school’s students must take specified state and federal tests, or the entire school fails. Subcategories include special-education students, English-language learners, poor children and different ethnic groups.
For example, if a school has 50 special education students, and the parents of three of them request that their children not take the test, then the entire school fails.
To remedy this, O’Connell will ask that schools be allowed to score a zero for children whose parents opt out – this will lower the school’s overall test scores, but will reduce the chance that a school loses everything because parents exercise their right to opt out.
Compounding this unfairness is that California is the only state that allows parents to opt out of the tests, O’Connell said.
O’Connell’s other major proposal is that schools be judged on a “growth model” rather than by absolute scores. Under a growth model, schools that miss their test-score goals must make up 5 percent of that difference each year. Because the goals are steadily rising, this standard gets more difficult over time. The growth model is the method by which the state judges its own schools.
But under the federal compact, school test scores must hit an absolute goal. This forces schools whose students are poor, noncollege-bound, foreign-language speakers to meet the same standards as students of college professors in wealthy communities. That’s neither fair nor realistic.
We can think of no other federal program that sets constantly rising goals for an institution and punishes those who fail by taking money away. Polluters don’t have to do it, the auto industry doesn’t have to do it, government doesn’t have to do it. The only ones who have to do it are our kids.
