New law adds up to quiet upheaval, frustration in local education
BY JAN MURPHY
Of The Patriot-News
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Art teachers in Lebanon School District emphasize writing skills.
A Cedar Crest Middle School science and math teacher must take a test to prove she is qualified to do her job.
Four Lebanon schools may face penalties because they serve many Hispanic students with limited English who did not fare well on state exams.
The reason for all this: the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, a sweeping federal law that is causing a quiet upheaval in local education.
Under the law, teachers must prove they are qualified. Public schools must work to ensure that all children succeed on reading and math tests.
The state has established incremental goals of "adequate yearly progress," or AYP, that schools must meet. It requires schools to have at least 45 percent of test-takers scoring proficient or better on the state reading exam taken this spring, and 35 percent on the math test. By 2006, those percentages rise to 54 percent in reading and 46 percent in math, as they climb toward the 100 percent math and reading proficiency goal by 2013-14.
Schools that fail to meet their AYP wind up on a "needs improvement" list. The state has said that 884 schools, including 40 in the midstate, are headed for the list that will be released this summer.
The penalties for being on the list are real: parents have the option of transferring their child to another public school in the district. And after five years on the list, schools can be taken over by the state.
The law is frustrating many school officials.
"The No. 1 problem is there is nowhere near enough funding," says Harrisburg Superintendent Gerald Kohn. "The No. 2 problem is nowhere near enough funding. And the No. 3 problem is nowhere near enough funding."
Officials worry the law doesn't allow schools enough time to improve. They are concerned with the rigid requirements for teacher quality. And some argue for flexibility in how the law is applied, particularly for students who speak little English or those with special needs.
The state's plan for implementing the law is awaiting federal approval, but the administration of Gov. Ed Rendell is working on making some changes beforehand. The plan was drafted under former Gov. Mark Schweiker.
Education Secretary Vicki Phillips says some schools were mistakenly included on the "needs improvement" list and she wants them removed. She also has concerns about the testing model the former administration chose, which allows for exams other than ones developed by the state to be used in some grades.
"Like everything else, whenever they put something this new, complex and comprehensive in place, they are learning as they go," says Phillips. "So there's the good and the worrisome."
Phillips says she feels confident that the early education programs and other initiatives Rendell has proposed will help schools boost student achievement.
However, Kohn says the problems of urban education cannot all be fixed in five years. As proof, Harrisburg schools, despite focused attention on raising student achievement, have managed over the past four years to reduce the percentage of students achieving failing scores on state exams from 68 to 63 percent.
"We are going to need more time because of how far we have to go," Kohn says.
Some education experts defend the law.
"The goal is right on target. We need to have every child in a good school," says Mary Fulton, a policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States in Denver, Colo. "Achieving that goal will not be easy, especially in these first couple of years."
No one is excused:
One controversial area of the law deals with who must take state tests:
Everyone.
By 2005-06, assessment tests are to be given in grades three through eight, and once in high school.
Schools receiving federal Title I funding -- aid given to schools with high poverty rates -- must meet certain standards or they will face the consequences that come with being on the "needs improvement" list. Most schools across the state receive Title I money.
If less than 95 percent of a class takes the test, a school could face the same consequences as schools with low test scores -- no matter how high their scores are.
A Bosnian emigre enrolled in February during PSSA testing. The non-English-speaking Carlisle High School junior spent the first hour of her first day in an American school staring at a test written in English.
Following an explanation from the teacher, the room fell silent and students began writing.
The new girl burst into tears.
Although a teacher comforted the girl and told her the essay wouldn't hurt her grades, "as an educator, I feel really bad that an [English as a Second Language] student would have to come here on the very first day and have to take an assessment," says Christopher Shaffer, assistant principal for 11th grade.
Another way schools could wind up on the list is if subgroups of students in a school -- ones with special needs, low incomes, who are minorities, or who speak limited English -- don't achieve the AYP goals on state exams. Their scores are mixed in with other students in their class, as well as counted separately if there are enough of them.
For this reason, four Lebanon schools, with large Hispanic populations, may have to allow parents to move their children to other schools in the district, Superintendent Marianne Bartley says.
Some schools are facing the same situation because of their special-needs students' performance on the PSSAs. Linda Rhen, executive director of the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit, says special-needs students usually are not going to succeed at the level of other students.
"That's why they are in special-ed," she says.
She and others agree accountability is important, but Bartley adds, "we also have to be reasonable."
One way to be reasonable, some educators say, is to look at each school's big picture.
"If the whole school is not reaching its goals, that's one thing," says Pennsylvania School Boards Association spokesman Tim Allwein. "But if the large majority are doing well, and a small number didn't do well, that's a bitter pill for schools to swallow."
However, a central principle of No Child Left Behind is to close achievement gaps for members of certain racial groups and to hold all students to the same high standards. To do otherwise robs those children of opportunities to grow intellectually and achieve their dreams, U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige said in a recent speech in California.
While parents can transfer children from a subpar school to one in the same district with a higher level of performance, small districts have only one elementary school or high school. In some districts, such as Harrisburg, every school is on the "needs improvement" list. For those parents, there is nowhere else to go, says Bill Goodling, a former Republican congressman from York County who chaired the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee.
The law encourages schools to work out arrangements to allow students to go to other districts, but that is not a requirement.
"Someone is going to have to enforce that or the children are still going to be left behind," Goodling says.
Teachers face tests:
Students aren't the only ones caught up in the testing frenzy.
Some teachers will soon be taking tests to prove they are fit to teach.
Lori Brown has been teaching seventh-grade life science, environmental science and math at Cedar Crest Middle School for five years. But she is certified as an elementary teacher.
Under the law, middle school teachers must earn credentials in the subjects they teach to meet the definition of a "highly qualified teacher." That requirement was put into effect because research shows a correlation between a teacher's subject matter knowledge and student achievement.
"Since the middle grades are steeped in content, it became necessary to have the teachers in those grades be highly qualified in the subjects they teach," says U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Jane Glickman.
Brown is confident she can pass the test, but wonders why experienced teachers must take it. "I think the certification is a good idea for new teachers, but what about the teachers who have been around for 20 years and doing a fine job? I don't think it's necessary," she says.
Statewide, some 5,600 middle school teachers must take certification tests, according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, but the numbers vary widely from district to district. West Shore has 24 middle school teachers in that boat, while in Cumberland Valley, there are fewer than 12. Carlisle has nine, as does Millersburg. Harrisburg Education Association President Richard Askey was uncertain of the number of teachers affected in the city's schools, but suggests "it's a fairly big issue in our district."
Millersburg Superintendent John Fronk argues that subject certificates for middle school teachers are unnecessary.
"A secondary teacher is subject-oriented," he says. "Middle school students still need that nurturing and caring and I think they get that from elementary teachers."
Also affected by the requirement are the nearly 5,200 teachers working on emergency permits, which are given when districts cannot find a teacher certified in a given subject.
Harrisburg has 66 teachers with emergency certificates, state records show. Central Dauphin follows with 16, and Carlisle has 13.
Addressing this requirement won't be easy, says Kohn.
"Right now, we are finding it very difficult in a number of areas to locate certified teachers in certain hard-to-fill positions," he says. These areas include advanced science and math, and special education.
Rieser, of the Education Law Center, says there is another problem with the law's approach to teacher quality: schools must notify parents if their child's teacher is not "highly qualified." So far, few schools have done so, he says.
"If they carried it out, it seems to tell parents their child is taught by an unqualified teacher," he says. "And then what? It seems this has the potential to alarm parents, but whether it solves the problem, I don't know."
But advocates of No Child Left Behind say the more-stringent teacher requirements are sound, given the expectations for raising student performance.
"We now have concrete evidence that smart teachers with solid content knowledge have the greatest effect on student achievement," Paige said in his first annual report to Congress on meeting the highly qualified teacher challenge.
Money for the mandate:
Kohn and others insist that funding is the law's biggest problem, even though it does give schools more flexibility in how they use federal dollars. He says more money would help districts attract "highly qualified" teachers in hard-to-find subjects. More money for preschool is another urgent need, he says.
The law allows spending up to $16 billion this year, says U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-York, who serves on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Congress approved only $11.8 billion, based on an updated assessment of the law's costs and the fiscal realities facing the federal government, he says. "I don't think it's without basis that local school officials are claiming that in implementing No Child Left Behind their costs may exceed the additional revenue they get from the federal government, ... but there still is some responsibility at the state and local levels," Platts says.
Underfunding the law in its second year is not the road to success, Kohn argues.
Rieser agrees, saying schools should not be expected to achieve rapid progress, especially with little additional money.
"It's not like there's been a conspiracy among educators all these years to leave children behind," he says. "The problem has been they didn't have the resources."
Staff writers Elizabeth Gibson and Monica VonDobeneck contributed to this article. JAN MURPHY: 787-3061 or jmurphy@patriot-news.com
Copyright 2003 The Patriot-News. Used with permission.
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