Warner's Edu-guy says NCLB needs more "teeth"

[Moses]

No Child Left Behind is put to the test




By Greg Toppo

President Bush's signature education law took a bit of a beating in 2005. The No Child Left Behind law of 2002 saw challenges in federal court and state legislatures.

The law is Bush's effort to improve education by making schools accountable for the progress of all children, including minorities, the poor and the disabled. ["effort to improve education"-- right, like his Iraq War is his "effort to protect America"]

The most aggressive attack against it came from an unlikely foe: Republican-voting Utah. In April, state lawmakers there approved legislation that gives schools permission to ignore the law. A showdown over federal vs. local control could come this spring, when schools begin testing students. Under the law, if scores don't steadily improve, school districts must provide free tutoring or busing to better-performing schools.

Also in April, the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, sued in federal court, asking a judge to exempt school districts from any of the law's requirements that aren't paid for by Congress. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed the lawsuit last month, but the union says it will appeal. In August, Connecticut's attorney general filed a lawsuit with similar complaints.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings relaxed regulations for many states on testing, teacher quality and other requirements, but observers on both sides say that might make matters worse.

Opponent Gary Orfield of Harvard's Civil Rights Project says the law is "being kept afloat by a bewildering number of patched-together agreements." Supporter Andrew Rotherham of the Virginia State Board of Education says Spellings' concessions have taken the teeth out of the law. "They seem unable to say no," he says. [This portends what Warner's edu-policy would be -- dictatorial-- with the corporate elite, the hack pols, and the educrats dictating to American families and locales. ]

Education Department spokesman Kevin Sullivan says Spellings has cut deals only with states that prove they're committed to the spirit of the law and to closing achievement gaps between poor and wealthy students. "She's still extremely hawkish on accountability," he says.

Lawmakers from both parties say they'll introduce legislation next year to amend the law before its reauthorization.

— Greg Toppo
USA Today

[Moses]

Warner: Another Pol Putting one over on Americans, burying the dead in the dark, away from view:


Manipulating the numbers: Department of Education more concerned with image than truth



by Robert Legge

Everyone wants to know “How are our schools doing?” But far too often the data we get out of the Virginia Department of Education are skewed to promote an image of skyrocketing improvement.

Gov. Warner crows about our 94.6 percent graduation rate. Guess our schools are doing so great that almost everyone leaves school with a diploma, right? Not exactly. That is simply the number of seniors who end up graduating.

Mr. Warner apparently assumes that citizens are not interested in hearing about all the other students who drop out earlier in their academic career.

Roanoke Del. William Fralin thinks Virginians might want to know about that, which is why he has sponsored HB19 that will require the DOE to change the way it calculates the graduation rate.

Basically, it would use a formula that would take the number of graduates divided by the number of first-year ninth-graders four years before. Unfortunately, the graduation rate will take a nosedive to the lower 70s using these new, more accurate calculations.

It will be interesting to see if our new governor, Tim Kaine, is interested in accurate data or wishes to retain the old “happy” numbers of past administrations. It is still early, but no other legislators have signed on to Mr. Fralin’s bill.

The DOE told me they have no opinion on the bill. Why would they want to see the graduation rate drop by 20 points?

But this obsession with “happy” numbers doesn’t end there. An even worse example of distortion has been with the Standards of Learning figures. Now I will not get into the issue of whether or not the SOL program is good for kids. People could argue about the pros and cons of that all day long.

But what is blatantly dishonest is the way the SOL numbers have been manipulated to convince the public that things are extraordinarily wonderful. Who wouldn’t be thrilled about the meteoric rise in accredited schools? The numbers are stunning. From 2 percent accredited in 1998 to 92 percent in 2005.

Now, what the DOE won’t tell you is that if they used the exact same accounting methods to determine accreditation today as they did in 1998, the number of accredited schools would be in the under 50 percent range instead of 92 percent.

How can this be? Through numerological calisthenics that enable some schools to be accredited that would not if the same accounting methods were used. Methods such as lowered pass scores, bonus points, new test retake rules and “adjusted” scores.

Let’s assume that all those changes make the process fairer. Fine. But when you change the accounting rules so dramatically, you can’t continue to make honest comparisons to past years’ SOL accreditation results.

Unless of course you are more interested in showing dramatic gains. If a corporation told investors that profits were way up but neglected to mention the new accounting methods, the SEC would be all over them.

I asked Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia DOE, if he thought it was fair to compare 1998 SOL results with today. He wouldn’t answer the question, simply saying that the state did not make comparisons of the different standards employed during those two times.

Then-president of the Virginia Superintendent’s group, Edgar Hatrick, told me in an e-mail last year that he thought the public is getting an accurate picture because the old 1998 “standards, some of the test questions, and some of the pass scores were not good measures.”

There’s two of the leading advocates of the SOL program. One doesn’t want to talk about how the rules have changed. The other says that the old measures were bad measures. Yet both are eager to brag about how much better our accreditation rates are since 1998.

If the majority of the legislators and education officials believe that pass rates can actually distinguish between good and bad schools, learning and not learning, if they have so much faith in the program, then why aren’t they also concerned about muddying up the data with these inflation schemes. Could it be that they just like “happy” numbers?

If the DOE wants to continue to tout standards and accountability, they need to take a hard look at themselves first.

---

Robert Legge is an independent columnist and resident of Madison County. His column appears each Thursday. E-mail [e-mail].


— Robert Legge
Culpeper Star-Exponent
2006-01-05