Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
March 20, 2011
HEADLINE: Schools Educators back ideas to reform No Child

By Mary Giunca

State and local educators say they approve of President Barack Obama's proposals to give local schools more control, support teachers and devise better ways to measure student performance.

Obama called last week for changes to No Child Left Behind legislation, which was enacted in 2002 under President George W. Bush. Obama said the legislation set the right goals but did not always offer the best ways to reach those goals.

The law's goal was to see that all students in public schools would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Obama called on Congress to reform the law by reauthorizing it before the start of next school year.

The law requires end-of-grade tests in reading and math for students in grades three through eight. High school students take end-of-course tests in algebra, English and writing. The tests were designed by each state, and goals were set for each school by the state. Each year a larger percentage of students is required to pass in order to meet the goal of 100 percent of students achieving proficient scores by 2014.

Schools either pass or fail according to their test results. Schools that receive Title I money for free and reduced-price lunches and fail to meet their goals for several years, could be forced to replace teachers and principals. A turnaround plan is required with strategies to improve test scores at the school.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said 37 percent of American schools are not meeting their targets and that by 2011 more than 80 percent of schools would not meet their targets.

The system is flawed, Superintendent Don Martin said, because the tests measure the test scores of a group of fourth-graders one year against fourth-graders in the previous year, even though classes differ in their skills from year to year.

The tests also divide students into subgroups based on race, ethnicity, ability to speak English, income and the percentage of the subgroup that takes the test. Students in a subgroup who don't do well on a test, or simply weren't able to take it because of illness, could cause their schools to be labeled failing, Martin said. He hopes the Obama plan will offer a solution that keeps entire schools from being labeled "failing" because one group of students did poorly on one test.

A more meaningful test would measure how much progress the same group of students made as they moved from third grade to fourth grade. Martin said he supports Obama's call to reduce dependence on fill-in-the-bubble-tests and replace them with tests that measure such things as problem solving and more sophisticated skills.

State Rep. Dale Folwell, R-Forsyth, said that he is concerned about the way the test results are used.

Obama didn't mention student mobility rates, which show the number of students who move during the school year. That has a direct relationship on academic performance and test scores, Folwell said. Schools with large numbers of students who move from year to year have a harder time reaching test targets.

"It's the biggest thing that's affecting urban school districts across the state and across the country," he said.

At Cook Elementary School, the mobility rate is 41 percent, according to statistics provided by the school system.

Sheila Burnette, the principal of Konnoak Elementary School, said she welcomes Obama's call for more local control. Under the current law, money for school improvement is mostly confined to helping students in reading or math. But a good principal might feel that establishing an anti-bullying program and creating a safer environment would do as much to improve test scores.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth Countyschool board member Buddy Collins said that No Child Left Behind is an example of government bureaucracy at its worst, and he's not sure it can be fixed.

The law punishes teachers and creates morale problems at schools when test scores are low, he said.

And he doesn't believe that the tests accurately measure what children are learning. The unsophisticated style of the tests dictates a "drill and kill" mentality in the classroom, he said.

Students memorize the material for the test, but they don't necessarily develop the reasoning ability and creativity to move onto more sophisticated material, he said. Their future test scores may suffer because they don't have a grasp of the underlying principles, he said.

"There are some really heroic things being done in low-performing schools that will never be shown on any test scores," he said.

He was involved with putting a group of low-performing fourth-graders in an all-boys classroom a few years ago. The boys told teachers that they had been told their whole lives that they were stupid.

Collins said teachers concentrated on building camaraderie and confidence. The test scores probably didn't improve enough from that effort to make a difference in the school that year.

"But it made a difference in the lives of these kids," he said. "It was the first time they saw themselves as successful in school."

If that program continued, Collins said, it would bring up grades and test scores for that group of boys. But there is nothing in No Child Left Behind to support such efforts, he said.

School board member Jane Goins said she is concerned that a longer-term effect of No Child Left Behind is that a generation is being discouraged from entering the education field. All of the publicity about failing schools creates the impression that something is horribly wrong in education.

No Child Left Behind also calls for teachers to be fired if schools continue to fail, she said. The problem is that a teacher can do everything right -- can even help a child improve -- but the child may do poorly on a test, and the teacher is punished.

"I just don't think you can label a school, replace the principal, the teachers," she said. "You're not going to replace the student clientele."