No Child Left Behind?

The big news of the week has to do with the results of the testing in the public schools last spring with respect to the No Child Left Behind standards set by the government accruing to a federal statute enacted soon after President Bush took office. Remember: Bush and Senator Kennedy played extra-nice to each other in that process. Now, Kennedy makes it plain that Bush is roughly on a par with Satan with respect to most everything. In going through the material related to this subject, one is struck immediately by the fact that there have been enormous bright spots along with some abysmal failures. Those interested in the subject can gain access to it by heading for the Ky. Dept. of Education Web-site.

It’s unfair in many ways to get too specific about most things, since everything from demographics to weird entities such as school-based councils that set their own curricula and hire their own principals enter the picture. For starters on the basis of testing throughout the 12 grades, the state was successful in meeting 16 of the 25 target goals, or attaining a mark of 64% – maybe a D- average. An amazing circumstance is that the goals for the percentage of students gaining proficiency in reading and mathematics, the two subjects upon which students were tested, are unexpectedly low, though they are considerably higher for the overall 12-grade system than for its individual parts. For instance, the overall reading-proficiency goal statewide for 2005 was that 45% of students would be proficient readers at grade-level, huge segments of students actually exceeding that mark, while the same goal for students at local Bryan Station High was set at only 29%, but was un-reached. These unbelievably low goals, especially at Bryan Station, will also obtain for the next two years. After 2007, the goals will rise precipitously each year until 2014, when the goal will stand at 100%, a pie-in-the-sky figure that is too unrealistic to take seriously.

Amazingly, the goal for proficiency in mathematics in all grades statewide for 2005 through 2007, including Bryan Station, was that just under 30% of students would be expected to function at grade level. Statewide, the goal was exceeded, as was the case with the reading goal, but still missed at Bryan Station, though just barely. The yearly gains after 2007 are pegged at about 10 points a year, an apparently hopeless endeavor unless the standards for testing and grading are adjusted to make the goal attainable. This is not an effort to single out Bryan Station, since only one of Lexington’s five high schools, Lafayette High, met its overall goals. Despite good scores by many segments of students in these areas, the state system, on the basis of federal standards, has not made adequate yearly progress for the last three years.

One of the most alarming elements in NCLB is the seeming admission by educators that individual progress is expected to regress as the student works through the system. Currently and through 2007, about 53% of elementary students are expected to be proficient readers and about 32% in mathematics. In middle school, the numbers are 52% and 27%, respectively; for high school students, only 29% are expected to be proficient readers (down from 53% at the elementary level), and just under 30% are expected to be proficient in math. The question: Is the system designed to “dumb-down” the student, or is the student expected to “dumb himself down,” notwithstanding whatever is done about the system, which obviously begins deteriorating at the middle-school level and continues to crumble through high school.

The Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA) had some strange features such as combining kindergarteners with third-graders (this feature long since rescinded, thankfully). The most damning of all, however, was the institution of the School-Based Council, made up of the principal, three teachers and two parents and directly responsible for curriculum, hiring of principals, schedules, materials, recreation – just about everything, leaving the superintendent and school-board virtually powerless, at least with respect to pedagogy, the most important element of all. This meant that within a system students arriving in middle school would come from totally different elementary-school backgrounds and that students arriving in high school would come from the same middle-school circumstances. In other words, the lawmakers legislated against any sort of standardization and control by elected officials, whose only important tasks are the hiring of a superintendent occasionally and setting up a budget, largely controlled in Frankfort. This is where the disintegration of the process starts, even though curriculum coordinators, though not the final arbiters, have doubtlessly done much to hold the system together. Much of KERA has been dismantled; it remains for the complete dismantling to take place and the sooner the better.

In Fayette County, 23 schools (not quite half) failed NCLB. One result is that the superintendent collected a bonus of $18,000 to add to his base salary of $180,000, or $198,000 in wages for his first year, in addition to all the fringes. Not having much power anyway, he probably did no harm and so perhaps earned the bonus. Since his contract calls for a 10% bonus each year, if earned (and it will be if he just does no harm), by the end of his fourth year he will be paid $263,538, representing a 46% increase in basic wages over the period. This represents the thinking of the legislature in 1990 (the notion that anything can be bought) when it installed the “rewards system” designed to pay teachers and administrators for just doing their jobs. All this miserable legislation accomplished was wholesale cheating by teachers and administrators throughout the state. While lots of things can be bought, education is not one of them. This is not to speak disparagingly of the Fayette superintendent. He simply has little with which to work, but one wonders what the teachers (the people in the trenches) think, in light of his circumstances, after struggling through the day with a system that is, at best, merely dysfunctional.

Perhaps the most important mitigating factor in the scoring process has to do with the demographics. At Lafayette, 711 white students and 118 African Americans took the test; at Bryan Station, the numbers were, respectively, 281 and 212. Proficiency percentages for whites at Lafayette were 66 and 60 for reading and math, respectively, and 37 and 25 for blacks, who raised their reading scores by eight points from those of 2004. At Bryan Station, the numbers, respectively, were 35 and 30 for whites and 25 and 13 for African Americans. Blacks at Lafayette did better in reading than whites at Bryan Station and only five points less in math. Bryan Station is a Title I school because it serves a high percentage of poor students and therefore receives federal money. Lafayette is not. The learning gaps are obvious, both that between whites and blacks and that between more affluent and less affluent students. The answers to this problem, since the students are exposed, at least in their respective schools, to the same elements of education endeavor, may lie in the social area, which neither the superintendent nor the school-board nor even the teachers can significantly affect. Therein lies the real tragedy.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark