More Schools Added to "Needs Improvement" List

As NCLB's performance mandates age, school systems are beginning to bump up agaist the ceiling of making improvements in the "low hanging fruit." The Baltimore Sun carried a story on more schools being added to the watch list because they are not making the annually increasing adequate yearly progress for all their students.

The number of Maryland elementary and middle schools on the state's list of poor performers grew slightly last year -- in part, officials said, because the standards are getting tougher every year.

Statewide, 176 schools are on the list -- including more than 60 in Baltimore City and, for the first time, two in Howard County. A school gets the "needs improvement" label for failing to meet federal standards two years in a row.

Nine more schools made the list this time, or 16 percent of schools overall. Maryland State School Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick played down the increase, saying it masks the fact that a larger number of children are passing reading and math tests required by federal law.

While just about everyone involved with education knows that 100% proficiency is difficult, if not impossible to achieve, I am problably one of the few who have studied this matter to think that we should not abandon the goal. I do however, think we need to reassess our measurements, including looking at growth models of measurement that can keep a school off the "needs improvement" list.

When NCLB was first promulgated, I predicted that the impact of the law would be shortlived, with its lifespan measured by the length of time that schools could consistently improve the bubble kids. Once these "low-hanging fruit" were brought up to level, the life span of NCLB was limited. In part because the law encouraged the attention on the middle of the road kids, those who needed just a little help while ignoring those kids who were are already proficient and those who were deemed a long shot or worse a lost cause.

One of the problems with the approach that schools took, which should not have been surprising, is that the early years of NCLB offered an opportunity--now it turns out, a lost opportunity--to radically rethink the manner in which we educate our kids. I an not just talking about teaching, althought instructional methods and pedagogy are a big part of it, but also school structures, curriculum design, instructional aids, scheduling and presentations. All of these should have been thrown on the table for researchers and school systems to examine in the wake of NCLB's passage. Now five years later, we have done nothing substantive.

With no real educational innovations even being contemplated on a wider scale, it is no wonder that schools and states are going to see the number of schools ending up on the needs improvement list increase--particularly in those "high quality" suburban districts that educators crow about. We simply have not made enough changes to make a difference in those kids who need the most help.

Cynics will say, "well that was Bush's intention--to create a long list of failing schools so that he can privatize the schools." But that clearly could not have been the intent of Rep. George Miller (D-CA) or Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who while being supporters of NCLB are also supporters of traditional publich schooling. Rather the failure is of government, and indeed society, look beyond the here and now. Instead of simply decrying the draconian measures of NCLB, why weren't our leading educational thinkers trying new things, new methods and new ideas? Why weren't our teacher education institutions trying to find new pedagogies?

The answer, no doubt is complicated, but it will all boil down, in the end, to laziness and lack of imagination. We have spent the past five plus years since the passage of NCLB arguing about the efficacy or fairness or unfairness of the law instead of taking the window of opportunity we had and trying to reform the education system in our country. Aside from a relatively few innovations in school management, our education system is not all that different than it was 100 years ago. In a country where this year's computer released in April is obsolete by Christmas--the lack of educational innovation is troubling.