7/27/08

Plain Dealer

Scott Stephens

Ohio is one of just six states that will be allowed a little more flexibility under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

That new flexibility will:

a) Result in students learning more.

b) Offer teachers greater creativity in their lesson plans.

c) Enable districts that post good test scores to avoid being labeled as failing.

d) None of the above.

If you answered “d,” award yourself a shiny red apple.

Fact is, the state’s 1.8 million public-school students who will march back to class this fall won’t have a clue that the U.S. Department of Education eased regulations for Ohio.

Nor will the state’s teachers, principals and superintendents find their day-to-day chores any easier.

That’s because the new program – the Differentiated Accountability Pilot, in education jargon – hands the increased flexibility to state officials rather than to practitioners in the field.

That’s a disappointment for districts that have struggled to meet federal benchmarks despite continued academic improvement.

Lakewood, for instance, met or exceeded 25 of 30 state academic targets in 2006-07, showing strong improvement in almost every building.

But the district failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress, the federal academic benchmark, because black and disabled students missed math and reading targets.

The various combinations of student groups in Lakewood – a district with children who speak 42 languages – give the school system more than 100 hurdles to clear to make Adequate Yearly Progress. More-homogeneous suburban neighbors may have only 20 such hurdles.

The relaxed federal rules in Ohio won’t change that conundrum.

“The thing that frustrates me is that it doesn’t change anything in terms of the scoring system for school districts,” said Lakewood schools Superintendent David Estrop. “In terms of labeling a district, this will have no impact whatsoever.”

Here’s how the change will work in Ohio, pending approval by the legislature:

The No Child Left Behind act requires all public-school students to meet state reading and math standards by 2014. Schools and districts that miss targets in those subjects fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress. About two-thirds of the more than 600 school districts in Ohio last year fell short of meeting the progress standard. That’s mostly because the federal benchmark requires that all groups of students – regardless of race, income, ethnic origin or disability – meet state targets.

So even if a district has generally high test scores, the failure of small groups of students to meet math or reading targets can prevent that district from making Adequate Yearly Progress.

Under the law, those hundreds of districts that didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress were all labeled underperforming, regardless of whether they missed by a millimeter or a mile. Continued failure to reach that target could result in sanctions, up to and including state takeover.

The proposed change will allow Ohio to create three tiers of districts missing the yearly progress target – those requiring low support, medium support and high support. That way, the state can target the appropriate level of help to the districts that need it the most.

“Our goal in applying for this flexibility was so that we would be able to provide districts additional supports to address the needs of their students,” said State Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman.

Seventeen states applied to participate in the pilot program. In addition to selecting Ohio, a panel of experts gave Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Maryland the green light. The six states made the cut because of their advanced use of data in education policy decisions.

“I’m hopeful that they will build on this progress by creating effective new strategies that we can share and take to scale,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

The Ohio legislature is expected to take up the proposed revisions contained in the pilot program this fall. Meanwhile, Estrop and others are hoping that Congress, which is reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, will come up with a kinder formula. He said that between 400 and 500 of Ohio’s school districts are expected to miss Adequate Yearly Progress this year.

“My hope is that we can convince decision-makers in Columbus and Washington that we need to make some changes,” he said. “The children themselves, as well as the school districts, are being labeled failures, and that just doesn’t make sense.”