Editorial: Rewarding mediocrity

Friday, Oct. 6, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

Clark County School District officials are proposing to purchase color-coded honor flags to fly above schools that have showed significant academic improvement despite their failures to meet benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The School Board is to vote next week on a measure that calls for purchasing flags for 248 schools - 182 for schools that have met the federal requirements and 66 for those that haven't passed federal muster but have shown at least a 5 percent improvement in academics. The flags would be one of six colors, depending on the level of achievement. About 70 schools would not qualify for any banner. Total cost for the flags is expected to be $7,600 to $48,250, depending on the type of banners chosen.

The suggestion came from School District officials who are fed up with No Child Left Behind standards that call for annual assessments of standardized test scores and penalize schools that don't meet the federally set national criteria - even when the schools make significant progress. Principals can be fired if their schools fail federal standards, and states that fail to pass muster can lose federal education funding.

It is entirely reasonable that school administrators and students feel they deserve to be recognized for significant improvements that don't count under a federal law that fails to acknowledge such hard-won achievements.

But spending money on window dressing is not the way to do that. The money and planning would be better spent on improving academic programs so that more schools excel in educating students. The higher estimate for the total cost of these flags is enough to hire one teacher or purchase several computers.

We realize that the No Child Left Behind Act is a plan that often sets unrealistic deadlines and enforces narrow improvement standards that don't fit many schools. But creating an award for which 80 percent of schools qualify does little to reward outstanding achievement. Further, it is setting up a caste system in which 20 percent of Clark County's schools will end up being labeled substandard by omission, while others are lauded for mediocrity.