Fewer Children Left Behind, Technically
By Dave Orrick and Tara Malone Daily Herald Staff Writers
Changes in the way the federal No Child Left Behind Act is applied made it easier this year for suburban schools to improve their standing yet still carry children who aren’t keeping up.
State data released today shows many schools faring better because of changes that boosted them above federal goals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean students are actually learning more.
Based on standardized tests in math and reading and other measures, at least 215 Illinois schools and 131 school districts were given a passing grade instead of a failing mark for the 2004- 05 school year specifically because of the changes, which range from a wider margin of error for minority performance to more leeway for tests given to disabled students.
Statewide, the numbers look good at first glance. In all, 1,022 schools failed to meet state targets in reading, math and other indicators this year, down from 1,084 schools last year and 1,235 schools in 2003.
Not since the federal law – whose goal is to have every child in American schools at grade level by 2014 – took effect in 2001 have so few schools been in academic trouble. And many suburban schools earned their way off the list with better scores.
Furthermore, the improvements come in the face of escalating standards that required schools to achieve more this year than last in order to pass.
Yet, never before have there been more ways for schools to pass without reaching those standards.
A passing mark, known as making “adequate yearly progress,” is important because schools can face pricey federal and state sanctions – like allowing parents to transfer kids to schools with higher test scores – if they fail year after year. Eventually, they risk losing some federal funds.
The measures are a key component of annual school “report cards” distributed to parents throughout the state over the last several months and in coming days. They provide one of the only ways to see if students are learning more or, say, to compare schools’ performance based on per-pupil spending.
Parents will need to read the report cards closely to tell whether their schools, the largest recipient of their tax dollars, really improved over last year. No standardized test scores are altered, and true numbers of students above or below grade level are listed, educators note. But, like a company’s annual earnings statement, often the real reason for a good bottom line is found in footnotes.
Education officials, even some who have derided the federal plan as unfair, defend the changes as merely leveling the playing field.
“We didn’t want to leave any group behind,” says Gail Lieberman, who specializes in carrying out the federal program for the Illinois State Board of Education. “We’ve tried to look in a more fair and reliable way at all these measures.”
Among the changes, at least 45 students with a shared ethnicity, language ability, income level or special learning must be counted for their test scores to be reported. That’s up from 40 children last year.
Schools are considered to fail if any one of these groups fails, and it’s failures by groups – not by the student body as a whole – that cause most suburban schools to fail.
The new group size was a compromise with federal education officials, who cut deals with states over future testing methods. Illinois initially wanted the number to be 50. California negotiated its number to 100, while Maryland’s is as low as 5.
And a margin of error now stretches to allow as few as 35.3 percent of students scoring at grade level if their group is exactly 45 students. Last year, the margin of error allowed a target no lower than 37 percent of students in a particular group.
Lieberman defended the tactic, noting that “other states have tried it” and that federal officials OK’d it.
“The overall trend is to soften the impact of the law so fewer schools are put on the watch list,” says Jack Jennings, head of the Center for Education Policy in Washington, D.C. “The overall concern on the part of most states is the law is too rigid and expects things are going to be extremely difficult to achieve if not impossible.”
Making it easier to pass may bring only limited relief. More grades are set for testing in reading and math this school year, and the required passing score keeps climbing, Jennings notes. The more students tested, the more likely a school will be to reach the threshold of 45 kids in each category.
Lieberman points out the changes didn’t make things a breeze this year. Throughout the suburbs and the state, many schools did worse.
But the impact of the changes was striking in some cases.
For example, Maine East School in Park Ridge passed this year, though students with limited English skills fared slightly worse than last year, when the school failed. The wider margin of error gave the needed boost.
Don Marzolf, director of assessments in Maine Township High School District 207, even confessed he feels “a little slimy” about passing on a technicality.
But Marzolf and other educators can also point to areas where students have legitimately improved, and some educators insist they’re teaching so students can learn, not just teaching the test.
At Carpentersville’s Golfview Elementary, Principal Craig Sundstedt says he doesn’t bother much with the shifting rules. Students at the school – 90 percent of whom come from poverty and 69.8 percent of whom are new to English – surpassed state standards in reading and math, test results show. Students missed the mark last year.
“(It’s) some bureaucracy about how kids are counted, when they are counted,” Sundstedt said. “Here, you get kids who walk in the door and you need to figure out how to provide the best program for them.”
Staff writer Erin Holmes contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: A series of changes to the way state test scores are measured changed the fate of schools, districts:
‘Subgroup’ size bigger
“Subgroups” are groups of students classified by race, ethnicity and other factors, such as income and limited exposure to English. During the 2003-04 school year, if a school or district had at least 40 students with, for example, limited English, the average score for that group mattered. For the 2004-05 school year, the number is 45.
In other words: A school with 43 students in a group was held accountable last year; this year, it’s not.
Impact: 48 schools and five districts.
’95% confidence interval’
It’s a statistician’s word for a margin of error. Last year, the margin of error for determining whether a school passed was 3 percent for the average score of each special category. This year, it can be as high as 12.2 percent, based on a formula.
In other words: If a subgroup of 45 students scores 35.3 percent – 12.2 percent below the passing mark of 47.5 – the group passes.
Impact: 156 schools and 88 districts.
’2% flexibility’ adds 14% for disabled
This new nationwide feature allows educators to add 14 percentage points to groups of students with disabilities. Can’t be combined with other boosts.
In other words: If a group of at least 45 disabled students scores at least 33.5 percent – 14 percent below the passing mark of 47.5 – the group passes.
Impact: 11 schools and 38 districts
Harder for districts to fail
Last year, if one group scored below grade level in a single school or across the larger district, the whole district failed. This year, at least one group from each of a district’s grade spans (3rd-5th, 6th-8th, 9th-12th) must fail for the district to fail. For individual schools, it’s still if one group fails, the school fails.
In other words: Last year, if, for example, only Hispanics failed in third-grade reading, the district failed. This year, if Hispanics in third and eighth grades, but not 11th, fail reading, the district passes.
Impact: Unclear (not calculated by state)
Source: Illinois State Board of Education