Leaving behind No Child
At the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, Jeff Schafermeyer had to do something every educator dreads.
The principal of Boulder Hill Elementary School in Montgomery sent home letters informing parents their neighborhood school was failing and that they had the choice to send their students to other schools.
“That was the worst,” said Schafermeyer. “Families across the street had to choose what was best for their child — sending them to their neighborhood school, or busing them across town — and it caused a lot of unnecessary anxiety for families.”
But Boulder Hill’s predicament — which, unlike most schools, ultimately has a happy ending — was hardly unique.
More than 1,300 elementary schools across Illinois were failing by 2010, under federal No Child Left Behind standards, and that number is expected to jump at the end of this school year.
Which is why Illinois — and most other states — likely will apply for a waiver of No Child Left Behind requirements offered by President Barack Obama last month.
If granted, states could scrap the law’s most onerous requirements — such as ensuring 100 percent of students reach proficiency in math and English on standardized tests, providing after-school tutoring, and offering free bus transportation to better schools nearby — if they adopt new standards and plans for achievement.
Boulder Hill’s story
“It’s a Band-Aid,” said Kathy Dineen, assistant principal at Boulder Hill Elementary, on the administration’s waiver proposal. “And I think it shows that there’s a flaw in the system right now.”
Dineen would know. In 2009, those flaws became apparent when the school received its ISAT scores and school report card. A subgroup of 45 students with learning disabilities at Boulder Hill failed to meet standards — in education lingo, it’s called making “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP — in reading. At the time, there were about 600 students total in the school.
“That’s a real challenge. They’re being measured the same way as other kids, even though we can demonstrate growth from year to year — under No Child rules, that’s failing,” Schafermeyer said. “It can bring an entire school down.”
The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act laid out lofty goals for performance on math and reading tests for school children all over the country. In the first year of the law, for a school to be considered “passing,” just 40 percent of students overall, and in various subgroups such as race, disability and language, had to make Average Yearly Progress. But each year, the marker moves, and by spring 2012, at least 92.5 percent of students will need to make AYP for a school to be considered passing. In 2014, that standard is 100 percent.
Which is part of the reason Education Secretary Arne Duncan has warned that, nationally, more than 80 percent of schools at all levels across the country could be labeled as failing by the end of this school year.
Locally, the statistics also look grim.
Between the East and West Aurora school districts, only one school — Fearn Elementary in North Aurora — was scoring “passing” grades, based on 2010 scores, the most recent publicly available.
Indian Prairie schools are faring better, but even that district has watch-listed schools, and the district as a whole has failed to make annual yearly progress. So, too, have the Geneva, Batavia, Kaneland, Yorkville, Plano and Sandwich school districts.
The challenge
Boulder Hill Elementary’s administrators and teachers saw their scores as a challenge and got to work. As a Title I school, Boulder Hill became eligible for extra funds. They targeted their students with reading issues, set up an after-school tutoring club, and brought in a staff development programs.
The result in 2010?
“We failed to make AYP a second time,” Schafermeyer said.
Boulder Hill’s strong emphasis on reading in the 2009-10 school year had paid off — reading scores among students with disabilities jumped dramatically, surpassing state benchmarks.
But math scores for those same students didn’t improve enough. At the same time, Oswego’s English Language Learners program was moved to the school, and those students — who had to take their ISAT tests in English — also failed. Hispanic and low-income subgroups also failed to meet their benchmarks.
The provision of No Child Left Behind that required schools to monitor subgroups was meant to ensure that those children most vulnerable excelled along with their peers. But the subgroups have had the unintended consequence of skewing data. A school or district must report subgroup data only if there are at least 45 students in the group.
Which is part of the reason one district, Somonauk, has managed to mostly stay off the watch lists.
“If you fail in a subgroup, the whole school fails,” Somonauk Superintendent Dawn Green said.
The small size of the mostly white district has put it at a statistical advantage — it’s only required to report on low-income students and students with disabilities.
Still, like every other district, Somonauk has struggled to meet the ever-increasing benchmarks.
“Are we doing anything differently? Yes, I think a lot of schools are trying whatever they can,” Green said.
Finding success
That’s certainly been the case at Boulder Hill. After the school failed to make Average Yearly Progress a second year in a row, 48 students chose to attend other schools in the Oswego School District.
So school administrators doubled down their efforts in the 2010-11 school year, performing math assessments and remediation, hiring reading specialists, expanding the after-school tutoring program and even serving breakfast to 140 students.
When Schafermeyer talks about it, a smile spreads over his face. Students in nearly every category, in both math and reading, scored double-digit gains.
This spring, if they can repeat their success and get 92.5 percent of their students — subgroups and all — passing, Boulder Hill no longer will have to send out the letters to parents and offer school choice.
Which is good, because the number of “passing” elementary schools that parents can choose from in the Oswego School District has shrunk to just five in the last year.
Across the state
“It is very likely we’ll seek a waiver (on the No Child standards),” said Matt Vanover, a spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Education. “However, we still need to see what the details are. We would like to get a little more detail as to what types of flexibilities and waivers would be out there.”
Vanover said the State Board favors “a different accountability system.”
“Instead of looking at that unrealistic target, maybe we look at schools having growth on a year-by-year basis,” Vanover said.
Fox Valley educators are hopeful and confident that if the waivers are made available, Illinois would secure one.
“Illinois has been very aggressive in looking at principal and teacher evaluation, and I think that will help us qualify,” Indian Prairie School District Superintendent Kathryn Birkett said.
In June, Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law SB7, an education reform bill that tied teacher tenure and layoffs to student achievement, and which made it easier for school districts to dismiss tenured teachers deemed ineffective. Illinois has also adopted the Common Core Standards, a common curriculum across most of the country, to be rolled out in the next few years.
Those changes are all in line with Obama and Duncan’s plan — students still will have to take yearly tests in math and reading, but the administration says the emphasis will be more on measuring growth over time.
The biggest advantage of the waivers will be the ability for schools and districts to use those federal dollars in different ways — including redirecting money spent on transporting kids to other schools back into the schools that need help.
“Right now, we spend our federal dollars in a very prescriptive way, and I think what (the waivers) will allow us to do is for districts to spend that money in the way that will best benefit our students locally,” Birkett said. “No one knows how to do that better than the people teaching the students.”
Chicken or egg?
The No Child Left Behind effort “has benefited the kids from Boulder Hill School, absolutely,” Schafermeyer said.
But that’s not to say he’s not looking forward to the day when a better education plan comes along, one based more on student growth and less on a single test.
“No Child Left Behind, for a school that’s willing and eager to focus, it helped us. It made us a better school. But it’s very frustrating, and it’s really not going to be realistic,” he said.
Especially come 2014, when every student will have to pass their ISAT. Another frustration, he said, was learning all the ins and outs of the legislation, then explaining them to more than 400 families who couldn’t understand how their good neighborhood school suddenly was failing.
“We take those test scores with a grain of salt,” Schafermeyer said. “It’s just a snapshot of how they do on one test, on one day. Maybe a student didn’t have breakfast; maybe they didn’t get a good night’s sleep the night before.”
Whether the waivers are approved, the requirements dropped, and the letters to parents shredded, Boulder Hill’s administrators are still proud and happy with their results.
“We at Boulder Hill worked really hard,” Schafermeyer said. “It was the efforts of this staff and our community volunteering and the kids being focused that allowed us to achieve. Would we have done that otherwise? I think we would have ... But we were forced to because of No Child Left Behind.”
#Source: Chicago Sun-Times Media Network
By Jenette Sturges September 30, 2011
http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/7885778-418/leaving-behind-no-child.html
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