Why schools still detest the test

By Emily Richmond

Saturday, July 29, 2006 | 7:56 a.m.

espite this week's good news about improved scores on tests required by the federal government, the Clark County School District still wishes Washington oversight would go away.

School administrators and teachers believe the No Child Left Behind Act siphons resources and distracts the district, all in the name of scoring well on tests that, in Clark County, might miss the point.

Worst of all, the federal testing law is relentless. The standards require ever-higher achievement - and for a district that believes the tests don't really measure the quality of teaching - raising the bar just forces schools to squander more resources.

On Thursday the district announced 52 percent of its schools had made "Adequate Yearly Progress" on standardized tests as required by federal law, up from a third of campuses in the prior year. Schools are getting better at preparing students for the tests, but that comes at the expense of a broader curriculum.

If left to its own devices, the district would continue to demand accountability. But there would be more than one way of measuring student success.

"There's a fundamental flaw in the law, in that it focuses on too narrow a scope - math and reading," Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said. "It ignores the value of students developing their creativity, being exposed to art and music, citizenship and community service. All of those things are part of a good education."

In two years the proficiency benchmark will be raised statewide. That means scores that were good enough to make adequate yearly progress this week would fall short in 2008. Rulffes knows the number of Clark County schools that fail to make AYP could jump dramatically as a result. It's one of the reasons he doesn't want the federal standards to be viewed as the sole measure - or even the best measure - of the district's performance.

"I keep defending these schools that have been labeled as failures because they may have missed one student, one test question," Rulffes said. "The law needs revision, and I hope when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007 our voice will be heard."

That doesn't mean he sees no value in No Child Left Behind. The requirement that districts track students by ethnicity, socio-economic and special education status has provided schools with a wealth of data.

"We are tracking populations that have been underserved in the past, and we can direct resources to help them," Rulffes said.

"Any good business model has a way of identifying what you want to do and a means of measuring your success."

To be sure, significant challenges persist for the district. It's the nation's fastest-growing school district, where the population of students with limited English proficiency continues to skyrocket. Nearly 40 percent of students change schools at least once during the academic year. Half of the district's teachers have five years or fewer experience. Half will quit within three to five years, if history is any indication.

On standardized tests, proficiency rates for minority students are as much as 30 percent lower than for white students. Test scores are improving for students from low-income households but overall results lag significantly behind the districtwide averages.

Prior to the federal law, many states, including Nevada, did not require such statistics.

"You can't address achievement gaps without the data," said Mary Fulton, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit research clearinghouse for lawmakers and state officials. "These results can be frustrating, but it's better to have the information as a starting point and say, 'Where do we go from here?' "

The law was designed to raise accountability, student achievement, improve teacher quality and make America's public schools safer. Every public school student must be performing at or above grade level on statewide English, reading and mathematics tests by the 2013-14 school year.

The act requires 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.

Educators have questioned whether the act's requirements are viable or realistic. In a report by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project earlier this year, researchers said achievement by the nation's students in reading has remained flat since 2001. Students have improved in math, but the growth rate is the same as it was prior to the education-reform law taking effect in 2002.

Harvard researchers predict that by the 2014 deadline, more than 70 percent of the nation's students probably won't be proficient in math and reading.

States are also behind schedule in meeting the federal law's requirements for improving teacher quality.

By May 30, all of the nation's public school teachers were to have met their state's definition of "highly qualified." As of this month, 20 percent of Nevada's teachers still needed to either pass a national exam or submit proof that they have completed advanced coursework.

Nevada is one of at least a dozen states that haven't yet met the "highly qualified" teacher requirements. Nevada has told Washington that it has been trying. The state also has promised to better distribute the best teachers among its schools, in fairness to all students.

"Highly qualified" is defined by credentials, not classroom competency. But a review of School District accountability reports shows campuses scoring higher on the standardized tests used for AYP also had a larger percentage of highly qualified teachers than campuses posting lower scores.

At the district's six schools identified as "needs improvement" for a fourth consecutive year, the percentage of teachers not highly qualified ranged from 50 percent (at Myrtle Tate Elementary School) to 66 percent (at Fay Herron Elementary School).

Rulffes said he would ask his staff to investigate.

"This is a perfect example of how data can help us," he said.

Improving the ratios will require significant incentives, Rulffes said. And he's not talking about salary.

"It's about turning those schools into unique work environments that draw the very best teachers," he said.

That's the goal of a handful of campuses designated as "Superintendent's Schools." The roster includes schools that have struggled with paltry performance, as well as those that will serve as incubators to try new strategies. The selected schools will be supervised separately from campuses in the five geographic regions.

This could be the last year that Nevada's students are required to hit a prescribed mark on the federal testing. The state next year will ask for permission to measure how much smarter students are becoming any given year, as opposed to whether they are reaching a specific - and for them, perhaps unattainable - goal. Those kinds of measurements will give schools more credit for improvement.

Nevada's request to test students that way was denied this year, likely because the state was not yet prepared to test all grade levels under those rules. But those tests are in place, and Rheault said he's optimistic about Nevada's chances in the next round.

But there's still reason for celebration this week, a welcome relief for a district long reeling from poor test scores. Rulffes called it a morale booster for unheralded classroom teachers.

There's still more to do, he said. Get businesses to pitch in and get parents to participate more.

"We must press on," Rulffes said.