Education Plan Cited for Lack of Support

By Jason Kuiper, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Jan. 24–Calls from President Bush for more testing of students did not please Nebraska’s education commissioner.

Doug Christensen said there is a certain fatigue at schools with an overuse of testing.

No Child Left Behind, which is up for renewal this year, “lays all the responsibility on the schools and the schools can’t do it alone,” he said.

“I didn’t hear about support systems like universal health care for children and jobs for parents,” Christensen said.

Bush plans to allow more leeway in the use of an alternative system for U.S. schools and states to measure students’ testing progress, the White House said.

Bush will allow states to use “growth models,” in which schools are judged by the rate of student progress, rather than the current system of measurement against fixed academic targets.

Nebraska has been criticized for not developing a statewide test for all public school students. Instead, Nebraska has developed a system that allows districts to create their own academic standards — each district must, at least, meet state standards — and develop their own tests to measure whether students are learning what they should.

Some testing experts have highlighted Nebraska’s system as a potential model for the nation.

The state received approval for its testing system last fall after months of back-and-forth with federal officials over the rigor of the locally created academic standards and tests.

Christensen said he doesn’t believe there is local control with No Child Left Behind.

“It’s all about being accountable to the feds, not the schools,” he said. “I don’t quarrel with accountability, but who are we supposed to be accountable to?”

Another aim announced by Bush on Tuesday is to allow schools to override teacher contracts in cases where students fail to make sufficient academic progress.

Bush will seek to require that failing schools make “substantial” staff changes or overhaul their leadership, the White House said in a statement. That plan will include letting schools override teacher contracts, Education Department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said.

“For schools that are in restructuring year after year, this gives superintendents another tool in the toolbox to make improvements,” McLane said in an e-mail. “It’s an option.”

Overriding contracts is prohibited by the No Child Left Behind law and is one of several Bush proposals that experts predict will generate opposition from unions and Democrats.

The plan also may face legal hurdles, said Michael Petrilli, former Education Department official who is now vice president for policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

Still, the proposal may be valuable because it could spur debate on the need to remove poorly performing teachers, Petrilli said.

World-Herald staff writer Michaela Saunders contributed to this report, which contains material from Bloomberg News.

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