No Child Left Behind compliance at issue
Friday, April 28, 2006 • By JOHN MOONEY• Star-Ledger
Staff
New Jersey public schools could soon see some small but significant
changes in how they are measured under the edicts of the federal No
Child Left Behind Act.
Acting Education Commis sioner Lucille Davy has asked the federal
government for several amendments in the state's regulations as they
pertain to the law, seeking to loosen some require ments and tighten
others.
In all, the state's requests are consistent with those
already approved in many other states, officials and others said,
as both Washington and states continue to fiddle with the countless
details that drive the controversial school reform measure.
"There is no pullback in this in terms of accountability," Davy
said recently of the state's requests. "It is just a matter of fairness."
The state's requests are largely in the fine print of how the law
is applied in New Jersey, where last year a third of all its schools
fell short on one mark or another.
Overall, the federal law requires that schools show that students
in all categories -- black, white, Hispanic or special education --
gain proficiency in math and reading, ending with 100 percent proficiency
by 2014.
Any school that falls short in any one category can face escalat
ing sanctions, from the transfer of students to eventually the possible
closing the school altogether.
But within that broad mandate, states set the achievement levels
needed each year on the way to 100 percent, and the regulations for
how the schools are measured.
New Jersey's latest request would mostly give schools a little more
leeway. For instance, Davy has asked the federal government to double
the number of disabled students allowed to take less-rigorous alternative
state exams and still be counted toward the total achievement of a
school.
And for those still taking the state's standard exam, Davy would
also adjust the number of students in a racial or other category needed
for the school to be held accountable for those results.
The state now sets the minimum at 20 students needed in a given
racial category and 35 in special education. Davy's proposal would
put the number at 30 stu dents for all the categories, in up to three
grades, depending on the test.
In addition, the state has asked to use a so-called "confidence
interval" to measure overall scores, essentially giving schools a
margin of error if they are just one or two children off the required
proficiency levels, officials said.
The federal Department of Education is expected to act on the proposal
in the next couple of months, in time for the state's announcement
next fall of how schools fare after this spring's tests.
Virtually every state is doing some tinkering with how it applies
the federal law, and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has
been more flexible in some of the law's harshest edicts.
"States are grappling with a very difficult and complicated law,
and since they can't change the law itself, they are tweaking its
proce dures," said John Jennings, direc tor of the Center on Education
Policy, a Washington think-tank.
"New Jersey's sounds like a reasonable approach," he said. "It is
certainly a modest approach and doesn't seem to be trying to avoid
the accountability."