Newspapers across North Carolina recently reported dismal results from schools and districts statewide failing to meet the educational goals set forth by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The one word pointedly missing in the verbiage was “accountability.”
Most school administrators gave excuses, not answers to the questions regarding their schools’ failure to make the grade and, in most cases, declining in their overall academic performance during the 2004-05 school year.
At the forefront was Durham Public Schools, where only 23 percent of the schools in the system met the federal NCLB goals last school year. Carl Harris, Durham’s associate superintendent for instructional services, told The Herald-Sun reporter Mindy B. Hagen he was proud of the 13 schools in the district because they came “close” to achieving their goals. “It’s always disappointing when you don’t meet every goal,” he said in the article. “But we have to be mindful of the fact that 13 of our schools only missed by one or two goals. We don’t want to blame those schools for doing something bad or wrong.”
A plethora of interviews with other educators showed no one taking personal responsibility for their shortfalls. Instead, the NCLB results were only hours old when top-ranking school officials began to point fingers and sulk, claiming the NCLB benchmarks were too comprehensive for most people to understand.
In an interview with Charlotte Observer writer Ann Doss Helms, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Susan Agruso called the rating system “complicated.”
The same article quoted N.C. Department of Education official Lou Fabrizio as saying the NCLB act has caused a lot of confusion among the public. “Nothing can be explained simply,” he said. “If you explain it simply, you’ve probably misled folks.”
The educator’s lines seem well-rehearsed, as if designed to leave parents scratching their heads and wondering whether it’s the NCLB Act, not their local schools that are in deep trouble when it comes to educating their children.
Agruso and Fabrizio are not alone. Education officials statewide are labeling the NCLB act as stringent, unattainable legislation. “While the NCLB legislation has many positive features, it is however, an all-or-nothing approach that leads to high-achieving schools being labeled in need of improvement,” Kelly Rhoney, Catawba County Schools director of accountability services, told the Hickory Daily Record.
In a News & Observer article by T. Keung Hui, Principal Jamee Lynch of Hodge Road Elementary in Knightdale, a school currently not meeting the NCLB standards, reportedly discredited the NCLB Act. “You can’t make a decision about a school based on flawed legislation,” Lynch said in the article. “All we can do is work hard and take students as far as we can take them.”
Other educators are maintaining full support for the schools that didn’t make the grade. Debbie Smith, director of testing and accounting for the Person County School District, told Herald-Sun writer Shaun Lockhart that students in their failing schools are fine. “I feel our students are getting a good education,” Smith said. “Just because they don’t score well on a test doesn’t mean we aren’t meeting their needs.”
Some school officials simply blamed the children. In a story written by Danielle Deaver in the Winston-Salem Journal, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Superintendent Don Martin said he was pleased with the system’s performance, especially considering that the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch rates has increased as has the number of children who speak English as a second language.
“We have a population that has basically gotten poorer over time,” Martin said.
In the same article, Deaver reported those in higher academia, including Gregory Cizek, a professor of educational measurement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, support the rhetoric, saying the NCLB guidelines are too convoluted and difficult to achieve at this present time.
Cizek told Deaver there are limitations to the Adequate Yearly Progress tests and ABC scores are obsolete when it comes to measuring a child’s education. He said the end-of-grade tests should provide the needed educational measurements. “If people could look at a period of years and see that the scores have been increasing, that’s really good,” Cizek said.
While many mainstream schools are complaining after they failed to meet the needs of their students, there are others working diligently to meet the federal guidelines. Asheville Citizen-Times writer Amy Miller said the city’s Randolph Learning Center, an alternative school for students with behavioral or academic problems, met all its goals for the first time.
Miller also reported four schools sanctioned by the federal government for not meeting the NCLB standards in previous years in western North Carolina reached their goals this year.
In the end, it’s not difficult to understand why educators want to point the finger the other way. They have a lot to lose.
In reality, however, there are accountability measures in place for those children attending non-performing schools. The NCLB act allows children too long held captive in struggling institutions to receive special tutoring or transfer to higher performing schools.
Educators should be nervous. This could open the floodgates for more charter schools and potentially a voucher system for private education, enabling parents to make a real choice for their children’s future education. There’s nothing confusing about that.
Karen Welsh is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.