Learning curve

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Friday, Jan. 9, 2004 | 5:23 a.m.

January 10 - 11, 2004

Coming out of a recent parent-teacher conference at Kit Carson Elementary School, Clifford Smith Sr. clutched a multi-paged report card for his fifth-grade son.

Over the past few years Smith has noticed the report cards being brought home by his three children have become more detailed, with a breakdown for both attitude and achievement in each subject. He said he sees a real push to improve Carson, considered by the district and state to be an at-risk school.

"They're really good at telling me what's going on," said Smith, who attended the school 30 years ago. "I wish they had the programs they've got today when I went to Carson."

A major reason for the changes is the bright spotlight of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law two years ago last week.

The ambitious legislation was designed to raise student achievement, improve teacher quality and make America's public schools safer. The law calls for every public school student to show proficiency on statewide English, reading and mathematics tests by the 2013-14 school year.

The act also requires mandatory student testing, tougher teacher credentialing and strict sanctions for schools that don't live up to the standards. It also gives parents the choice to put their children in other public schools if the child's school fails to show gains for at least two consecutive years.

"This is the most massive intervention in the history of public education in this country," said Alex Molnar, director of the Education Policy Research Lab at Arizona State University. "Whether this has any positive effect on the state of schools in America remains to be seen. So far the only iron rule here is leave no child untested. The rest is still being ironed out."

Supporters of the law say it brings more accountability to education, but the law's mandates have come under criticism from many in education.

Educators have questioned whether the act's requirements are viable, and two years after the act took effect, the Nevada Education Department and school districts are still struggling to carry out the federal demands.

"Philosophically, you can't disagree with a lot of it," said Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia. "There's not a whole lot of point in fighting it. We have to focus our energies on making it work for our students."

That hasn't been easy, given the breadth of the law, which covers everything from teacher quality to parental involvement in the effort to improve student achievement.

"Our schools and our students will be better off for having tried," said Kathy St. Clair, the Nevada Education Department's consultant coordinating the state's compliance with the act.

Although St. Clair said the act has many potential benefits for public schools, she shared a concern common among educators: "I'm not sure the formula we have been given is the way to achieve those goals."

Lawmakers and educators in Nevada say they expect the federal law to be revised in the coming years as states wrestle with the demands. But while the deadlines and proficiency bench marks may be fine-tuned, the tenets of the law are expected to remain the same:

The law's bottom line is accountability. Supporters say the law was crafted to force schools to meet higher standards.

"For the first time there's accountability for the dollars coming from the government and accountability for the parents," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said.

"It used to be a parent could say, 'My kid's getting good grades, so it must be a good school.' But we have grade inflation going on like crazy in our state. The law gives parents real data to decide for themselves whether a school is doing its job."

Ensign said he knows the law has produced some confusion among educators in Nevada and elsewhere in the country, and he said lawmakers are considering revisions, including the requirement to have every student show proficiency on standardized tests.

"I'll be the first one to tell you this isn't a perfect piece of legislation," Ensign said. "We want every child to succeed. We don't want the requirements to be something that dooms kids to failure."

There has already been one significant concession by federal officials -- Education Secretary Rod Paige announced last month that the requirements for special education students would be revised to allow more leeway for children with severe disabilities.

The federal law gives states some leeway in how they measure academic progress by students. The states are allowed to pick from a list of sanctioned tests as part of their plans to improve education, which must be approved by the federal Education Department.

Some states are using a mix of tests based on their own standards while others are putting more emphasis on national exams.

In the long run the types of tests being used to measure progress may be less important than the effects of the intensified scrutiny, said Kathy Christie, vice president of the Education Commission of the States Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization.

"Having a light shining on the data is an enormous lever for change," Christie said. "But it only works if there's actually someone paying attention to that data and saying, 'Here's where we fell short, here's how we improve.' "

Under the act, the state sets the standards for what students in each grade should know. The state also has tests designed to measure those standards. The standards and the tests must be approved by the federal Department of Education.

In the past, academic achievement in Nevada was measured on the curve, or how students performed against each other on standardized tests. Beginning with this academic year, each student's performance will be compared against the state's standards. Those results will be used to measure annual yearly progress under the act. Schools that don't show improvement, either overall or in each subgroup of students, face sanctions.

Critics say that with a greater emphasis being placed on standards-based exams, school districts may wind up "teaching to the test" -- dropping innovative curriculum techniques in favor of drills, direct instruction and memorization.

That strikes Clark County School Board member Susan Brager-Wellman as a side effect of too much influence by the federal government in an area of local control.

"We have local school boards and school districts and state boards of education for a reason," Brager-Wellman said. "We're supposed to reflect our communities, not federal mandates."

But mandating that students pass standardized tests doesn't have to mean rote memorization without comprehension, Christie said.

"If the state standards are good standards then there's nothing wrong with focusing daily lesson plans around that content," said Christie, noting that teachers will have to plan more carefully to cover all of the material.

Clark County officials are reviewing the district's curriculum to ensure it meets state standards and prepares students for the annual exams.

To react more quickly to problems, the Clark County School District is putting in a new computer system that will track individual student progress, Garcia said. Instead of waiting for the annual statewide test results, teachers will be able to see if a student is meeting curriculum benchmarks throughout the year, Garcia said.

That's the kind of thing the school districts have had to do to make quick improvements.

More than 47 percent of the Clark County School District's campuses have been placed on the state Education Department's "watch list" for failing to show the "adequate yearly progress" on test scores demanded by the federal law. Another 18 schools are in at least their second consecutive year of failing to show annual progress and have been designated as needing improvement.

That means that they will have to show improvement or face the consequences. Nowhere is that more true than at Carson, one of a handful of schools in Clark County that has been struggling with test scores.

At Carson

Carson's primarily black student population has posted some of the lowest test scores in the district, and Principal Linda Gipson knows she's being watched.

Her school has become a picture of federal education reform in action.

Carson is in its third consecutive year of low test scores. The act takes into account test scores starting with the 2001-2002 school year.

If Carson students do not make strides on this year's round of standardized tests, the federal law requires the state to step in and demand the district replace key administrative personnel and teachers deemed responsible for the low scores.

Located in the 1700 block of D Street, the school is surrounded by modest tract homes, churches and the occasional small storefront. Nearly all of the students qualify for free and reduced lunches.

"The concept that every child should be challenged to meet his academic expectancy is a noble one, but there's a little bit of a gap here in terms of reality," Gipson said. "Many of our children come to this school already at a disadvantage because of their home lives and that's a deep hole for us and them to try and climb up out of. No Child Left Behind doesn't do much to help us with that."

One of the main criticisms of the law is that it looks at all children alike and requires improvement across the board.

"The intent of the law is the right thing to do, especially for kids who until now have been shunted off to the side," St. Clair said.

The law requires several accountability measures, and when a school fails, it requires serious action.

Already Carson is seeing that change.

Last year the district began offering students assigned to Carson -- as well as three other campuses labeled as needing improvement -- transfers to more successful schools as part of the federal school choice requirement.

Now, because of Carson's status as a school "needing improvement" for its third consecutive year, the district's involvement has increased. As the federal law demands, students at Carson must be offered supplemental services at the district's expense.

Parents must be given a list of approved providers -- such as private learning centers -- to choose from. While the district may be a provider of supplemental services, the school's staff may not. That has meant the cancellation of tutorial programs before and after school hours, Gipson said.

"The district is going to start offering something on Saturdays, but we know our captive audience is when the kids are still at school," Gipson said. "When we're told our teachers can no longer tutor students, our hands are tied. That's very frustrating for us."

Parental choice

The reasoning behind the law is that children will get a chance in another venue while the school's problems are hammered out.

Sanctions and scrutiny increase with each year that a school remains on the "needing improvement" list. For the first two years, the school is encouraged to improve. In the third year, school officials get a visit from the state to develop an improvement plan.

After four years districts must replace key staff and the state sends a team of advisers to restructure the school. At five years the entire staff may be replaced and the campus turned over to a private management company, such as Edison Schools Inc., or converted into a charter school.

The district has already seen 15 schools required to give children transfers to other campuses. Few parents have taken that opportunity, in part, parents and school officials have said, because the distance between a failing school and a good school can be far.

The transfers are available only to students at so-called Title I schools that are listed as needing improvement.

Title I is a designation for schools that have more students from low-income homes than the average district campus. Those schools get more federal money to help with instruction, hiring more staff and various campus improvements, including nutrition programs, buying books and music programs.

The act reasons that parents at failing Title I schools have fewer resources than parents at non-Title I schools.

Under the law, districts must notify parents prior to the start of the school year if their child's campus is a Title I school in need of improvement and provide parents with at least two alternate schools.

Letters from the Clark County School District to parents warned that children who opted to transfer faced a potential loss of friendships, longer commutes and fewer extracurricular opportunities. The letters did not include specifics about the two alternative schools, such as the likelihood of their having more experienced teachers.

At the first meeting of the Legislative Committee on Education, Sen. William Raggio, R-Reno, chided the Clark County School District for appearing to discourage parents from transferring the children.

"I didn't know we had put it in the law that districts tell them all the negatives and none of the positives," Raggio said sarcastically.

More than 4,500 letters went out to parents at six Clark County campuses identified as needing improvement in November, but just 15 students opted for transfers. District officials attributed the low number to the late notification and a reluctance by parents to move their children from their home schools.

"School choice to me is one of the most important parts of this law, and it needs to be applied correctly," Raggio said.

District officials say they have revised the letter to be more balanced.

Critics say the solution is beyond school choice. They say the state isn't doing enough to help.

Given the high demands of the federal law, Nevada should consider changes such as a longer school year or school day, said Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas.

A handful of legislators have tried for the past three sessions to lengthen the school year, without success.

"We're demanding that our kids show they've learned more, but we're not giving our teachers the time or the support they need to impart that knowledge to their students," said Giunchigliani, a former special education teacher in the district.

Funding

It's also frustrating that Nevada's share of federal education funding hasn't kept pace with the region's explosive growth, Giunchigliani said.

The school district's enrollment has jumped by more than 70,000 students in the past four years to an estimated 268,500. The state's education funding, however, is based on the 2000 census figures, a fact Ensign and Nevada's congressional delegation are pushing to change.

There are also additional costs to states and local districts of carrying out the law's demands. Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the Clark County School District, estimated the cost of the No Child Left Behind Act at $2.3 million for the 2003-04 academic year.

Eugene Hickok, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said funding isn't the issue.

Education spending levels are at record highs, and schools need to spend money more wisely, Hickok said.

Complaints from Nevada educators that the state's schools struggle because the per-pupil funding level of $6,438 falls short of the national average ring hollow, Hickok said.

"I can point you to our nation's capital where they're spending upwards of $13,000 per pupil and that might be the lowest-performing school district in the country," Hickok said. "We are a very generous people in America. We spend a lot of money on education. But we don't spend it smartly."

The accountability component of the federal education act should help Nevada educators in their quest for increased funding from voters and lawmakers, he said. By identifying exactly which groups of students need the most help, and having the standardized test scores to back up that need, the requests will carry more weight, Hickok said.

"They should be able to point and say, 'We're going to spend it on this and this and this, because we know based on what we've got that's where we have got to pay up,' " Hickok said.

Although the state is getting more money, education officials say it is not paying for the No Child Left Behind Act because much of that extra money is going toward specific programs that otherwise could have been spent on general education needs.

For the 2003-04 academic year Clark County was awarded $37.9 million in Title I funds, an increase of $6.7 million over the previous year. But the No Child Left Behind Act requires districts to set aside 20 percent of their Title I dollars to pay for school choice and supplemental services at failing schools.

That means Clark County winds up with $30.5 million for current programs, said Mark Lange, director of Title I compliance for the district.

"What looks like an increase is actually a 2 percent decrease in funding," Lange said.

While the overall Title I funding may have increased, that won't help the district's non-Title I campuses that are also struggling under the new testing demands, educators say.

Still, supporters of the law say that schools are on the right track because there is more accountability and more pressure on the education system.

For Clifford Smith, who now watches his three children run through the same schoolyard he once played in, the district is on the right track.

"My kids' teachers really care about whether they're learning or not. It's not just a rubber stamp situation," Smith said. "This is a good school."