WESTERN SKIES - September 27, 2005

*** LOCAL SCHOOLS TACKLE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ***

ERIC WHITNEY: According to local school officials, the federal No Child Left Behind Act has caused some hardship for school districts, but it's also forced some good changes. Last night, officials from three El Paso County school districts told an audience at the Penrose Library that despite progress they're making to comply with the law, they are virtually assured of eventual failure. Stephen Raher was on hand and has this report.

STEPHEN RAHERR: Two local advocacy groups, Citizens Project and the Alliance for Quality Public Schools, organized the Monday night forum. They invited local school administrators and told them to outline what they are doing to comply with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. That necessitated first explaining what exactly the law requires. And that is not an easy task.

The law and its implementing regulations are over four inches thick, and have been criticized by educators, parents, students, politicians, and pundits since the law's enactment in 2002. Former U.S. Senate candidate Mikes Miles is now working as the assistant to the superintendent of School District 8, which serves Fountain and Fort Carson. He did have some good things to say about the law.

MIKE MILES: We certainly agree, in School District 8, with the spirit of it. It is a good thing to make sure that all kids can learn, learn at high levels, and that we're addressing the needs of all students.

RAHER: But, said Miles, there are several things about No Child Left Behind that worry him.

MILES: First problem is we're measuring the wrong thing. What is it measuring? It is measuring a bar, artificially set. Instead what we should be measuring is student growth.

RAHER: In other words, says Miles, each year, a school district must have a certain percentage of its students score "proficient" on standardized tests. But if individual students make rapid improvements from one year to the next, that achievement is meaningless if the overall proficiency target isn't met.

At the core of No Child Left Behind is the concept of AYP, or "adequate yearly progress." AYP is based on meeting the required proficiency target, and it's measured by the Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP standardized tests. But as new District 11 superintendent Sharon Thomas explained to the audience, it's not just a simple matter of looking at average test scores by school or district.

SHARON THOMAS: AYP relates not only to proficiency, that is students scoring high enough on the CSAP in reading and math, but it also encompasses things like enough students in every subgroup taking the CSAP test. And enough students in every subgroup graduating from high school according again to the state's definition of graduation rate.

RAHERR: The subgroups that Thomas talks about are one of the key features of No Child Left Behind. Instead of relying on aggregate data by district, or even by school, the new federal law requires that test data be disaggregated and analyzed by certain demographic groups like low-income children, students of certain racial or ethnic groups, and those for whom English is a second language. Each of these subgroups must be analyzed for multiple grade levels at each school within a district, and all of these sub-scores are taken into account when determining whether a district is making "adequate yearly progress." Thus, said District 11 superintendent Sharon Thomas, whether a district is labeled as adequate or inadequate is only the tip of the iceberg.

THOMAS: The point is that a school or school district could meet every single AYP indicator but one, and still not make AYP for state and reporting purposes. As a result, community members and parents need to ask, when they see that a school or a district has not met AYP, "How many indicators did that school or district have to meet?" And then ask "How many indicators did this school or district fail to achieve?"

RAHER: Each subgroup that is required to be reported as a separate indicator, must consist of at least thirty students. Thus, smaller school districts likely have fewer indicators on which they are graded. In all, a district can be graded on up to one hundred fifty-three indicators. No Colorado district reports on all one hundred fifty-three, but three districts, including El Paso County's District 11, are graded on one hundred fifty-one. Perhaps the reason Sharon Thomas was so insistent on explaining this process has to do with her district's recent performance.

THOMAS: Well, we didn't as a district, by the way, meet AYP for the 2004-2005 school year. We did meet a hundred and thirty-eight out of a hundred fifty-one indicators. But the point is is that even if we had met only a hundred fifty indicators, we still would have not met AYP.

RAHER: In contrast, District 8, where Mike Miles works, was graded on a hundred and eleven indicators and passed each one, a rare achievement for a district of its size. Nonetheless, Miles does not foresee a trouble-free future. Each year, a district is required to have a larger percentage of students score proficient on the assessment test. This was hailed as an accountability measure, to make sure schools worked to improve education, not just maintain the status quo. But, as Miles notes, by the year 2013, all school districts' proficiency levels will be one hundred percent, a laudable but impractical goal.

MILES: Eventually every school district will fail, including my school district that I'm very proud of, School District 8. We will also fail. Because in the year 2013-2014, we're going to get fifty students walk in the door and they're going to be two or three grade levels behind. That's a fact. I mean, it's not a fact yet, but I predict that's what will happen. And so you're going to tell us that we have one year to move fifty kids, at least, three years or two years in one year's time. Now how likely a scenario is that? Not very likely.

RAHER: In the mean time, area school administrators say they will focus on complying with No Child Left Behind requirements as they stand in current law. As for making changes to the law, they say that is the responsibility of concerned citizens.

For Western Skies, I'm Stephen Raher.