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Virginia snubs no child left behind { January 20 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=80821&ran=54254http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=80821&ran=54254
State schools snub No Child Left Behind Act on two fronts
By DEIRDRE FERNANDES, The Virginian-Pilot
© January 20, 2005 | Last updated 10:03 PM Jan. 19
Call it a one-two punch.
On Tuesday the state’s school superintendents asked legislators to seek a federal waiver for Virginia from the No Child Left Behind Act. On Wednesday, the Virginia Board of Education unanimously approved a list of amendments that strikes at some of the cornerstones of the federal law.
In a move that State Superintendent Jo Lynne DeMary called a “bold action,” the board voted 7-0 in favor of 12 revisions that will be submitted to the federal government.
“I think there are some things that I have to believe were unintended consequences of the law,” DeMary said. “This is not a wish list. These are things that I believe need to be fixed and need to be fixed now.”
Since President Bush signed the 700-page law in 2002, it has come under plenty of criticism nationwide, particularly from educators who support the goals but argue that the requirements and sanctions are wrongheaded.
But Margaret Spellings , the new U.S. secretary of education, has expressed a willingness to listen to states, and DeMary said she wanted to get Virginia’s requests in immediately.
The law requires schools to satisfy dozens of requirements. These include reaching ever-rising pass rates on Standards of Learning math and English tests, and having a certain number of students taking the tests. In addition, a certain percentage of students in each of the various “subgroups,” such as blacks, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students, must pass the tests. If one group fails in any standard, the entire school does not earn the federal government’s gold star of “adequate yearly progress.”
Schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students are slapped with sanctions, such as allowing all students to transfer to better-performing schools and providing them private tutoring if they fail to meet the standards. The changes that the state board is recommending include:
- Allowing a team that includes teachers and parents to determine what SOL tests are appropriate for special-education students who are one to three years below grade level. Currently, divisions can only exempt a little more than 1 percent of the most severely disabled students from the tests.
- Only counting graduation and attendance rates for schools that are on the border of passing the math and reading tests. Graduation and attendance rates are now one of the many targets that all schools need to meet for the federal law.
- Counting student retakes of tests. Only the student’s first test scores are considered under the law, even though Virginia allows retakes for its state accountability.
- Targeting the transfer and tutoring options only to students who aren’t making academic progress, not the whole school. And reversing the order of the sanctions, so tutoring is offered before transfers.
- A school would be labeled in need of improvement only if the same group fails in the same subject for two consecutive years.
“I support them in their entirety,” said Milton R. Liverman, the Suffolk Schools superintendent. “They add a little common sense to the requirements. I don’t oppose accountability ; what I oppose is irresponsible accountability. The original form of No Child Left Behind was exactly that.”
In 2003, Liverman asked his School Board to consider rejecting $3.5 million in federal money rather than abide by the education law. But some parents and education experts are concerned about what these amendments could mean for children.
“I thought No Child Left Behind was a godsend,” said Keri Estabrooks, the parent of a fifth-grade special-education student in Virginia Beach . The law focuses attention on students who were sometimes under served, such as those with learning disabilities, Estabrooks said. “I felt this was a move in the right direction to have the administrators responsible to teach all children .”
Ross Wiener, a policy director for Education Trust, a national group that focuses on low-income and minority students, echoes that concern.
Wiener said he is particularly concerned about allowing teams to determine whether special-education students should be tested, which is similar to what schools did before the law, and eliminating the graduation rate requirement. “In some of these things they’re saying they just don’t want to comply with the law,” Wiener said. “I think it’s too bad. There’s been much more energy focused on how the law needs to be changed than how public education needs to change.”
Wiener said that in a state requiring students to take a certain number of tests to graduate high school, “the schools need to be held accountable.”
DeMary said Virginia is trying to follow the federal law, but all new reforms need changes eventually if they are to survive.
“If the federal government is not willing to meet the kind of requests we’re asking for, it makes me question their commitment, not mine,” DeMary said.
State officials hope to get an answer from the federal government by April.
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