Here is a case study on the perversity of the system and why more Federal programs aren't the answer to very many questions.
Failing Schools Find Hole In Law
Ark. Shows Bush Initiative's Limits
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 29, 2002; Page A01
ALTHEIMER, Ark. -- The quality of public education in this impoverished Delta town has long been an embarrassment to local officials, even by the modest standards of Arkansas, which ranks 49th nationally in the percentage of students who complete college.
In a school system so poor that the girls' and boys' basketball teams shared uniforms, 90 percent of the students scored below "proficient" last year on the Arkansas eighth-grade English test. Over the past three years, 56 percent of the boys and 35 percent of the girls in grades 7 through 11 scored in the bottom quarter nationally on the SAT-9, another standardized exam.
In short, Altheimer has the sort of struggling public school system that Bush administration officials vowed would no longer be tolerated under the No Child Left Behind Act, the far-reaching new federal education law that mandates serious consequences for failing schools and alternatives for the students who attend them.
But while 8,652 U.S. public schools have been identified as "failing" under the law, the two in Altheimer are not among them. The entire state, according to its officials, has no failing schools. Michigan, in contrast, lists 1,513 failing schools, the most of any state, a total that officials there attribute to rigorous standardized tests.
The wide disparity in identifying failing schools underscores the limitations of the new law's impact on the nation's schools, a weakness that could undermine President Bush's signature domestic policy initiative.
"I think in the beginning, some people got carried away with saying how much this law would make a difference in education," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research organization. "In the end, the states are going to be the ones who define what failure is. If a state stares the federal government in the eye and says, 'We have no failing schools,' there is not much that the federal government can do."
Under the federal law, each state is allowed to set its own academic standards. The states -- not the federal government -- decide what constitutes adequate academic progress. Similarly, the nation's 15,000 local school districts choose curricula and set local policy. This hodgepodge of authority limits the influence of the federal government, which provides only 7 percent of the nation's education funding and has little control over local schools.
Federal education officials acknowledge that failing-school designations say less about the quality of schools than they do about the rigor of the educational standards set by each state. Eventually, they say, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test that provides a comparison of student academic achievement across the country, will shed more light on state standards. But NAEP scores will not trigger any of the accountability provisions outlined in the new federal law.
Under that law, schools must fall short of state standards for academic progress for two consecutive years before they are deemed failing -- something that did not occur in Arkansas in 2000 and 2001, the years state officials reviewed to comply with the federal law. Wyoming has made the same claim.
Woodrow Cummins, deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Education, said the state reported no failing schools because it is still phasing in its accountability system and is not yet ready to identify which schools are not succeeding. "We know we have some schools that will be in [a] school improvement [program], so we have been working with the U.S. Department of Education to identify them," he said.
Maryland listed 118 failing schools after conducting a similar review; Virginia had 35; and the District of Columbia, 12.
There is widespread agreement that the Arkansas schools must improve significantly if the state is to raise its standard of living. A report released earlier this month by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), an Atlanta-based educational research organization, warned that poor school achievement threatened the state's economic future.
Recent improvements have left Arkansas with an above-average share of students graduating from high school, but the state still produces a below-average share of college graduates. Many believe this shows the need for the state to enhance what is required of its students.
"It defies reality to say Arkansas has no failing schools because, clearly, there are lots of schools that are failing students," said Steve Suitts, author of the SEF report. "If the federal legislation is going to mean anything, then state officials are going to have to have both goodwill and honesty in applying the federal law."
So far, the main benefit of the new federal education bill for Arkansas is an increase in funding. Arkansas is receiving $58 million in new federal money, roughly a 12 percent increase over the previous year, much of it in the Title I program for the disadvantaged. Still, few educators believe the funding increase is sufficient to create substantial change.
If either of the Altheimer schools -- which together serve 534 students from a district that covers 320 square miles of pine forests and farms -- were labeled "failing," strict accountability provisions in the new law would have taken effect this fall.
Officials would have been required to allow parents to transfer their children to better-performing public schools and allow private tutors to provide supplemental instruction to poorly performing students.
That wouldn't have been easy, local educators are quick to point out, because there are no better-performing public schools or tutoring firms within easy reach of this rural school district.
Long before the new federal law was passed, the Arkansas Department of Education had deemed schools here to be in distress under a state provision. State officials have been intervening for six years, providing consultants who helped devise detailed academic plans that officials say were largely ignored in the face of pressing daily realities.
Officials acknowledge that the limited help did nothing to improve student performance. Now the state has taken control of the schools and faces the difficult task of improving them.
In interviews with state officials, Altheimer teachers said they need better training in the use of computers and other technology to improve student achievement. But in conversations with one another, they more often talk about the problems they have inspiring students, 95 percent of whom are poor enough to receive free or lower-priced lunches, to take school seriously.
"Motivation for the students -- that's the biggest problem," said Trudie Reed, a 27-year teaching veteran, as she took a break between staff training sessions. "I couldn't say why; there are probably different reasons for it. But that's the problem."
Thelma Cook, superintendent of schools, agreed. "Apathy of the students as far as education is concerned, that's the problem," she said. "How do you get past that?"
When the schools opened earlier this month, they were under the direction of a state-appointed school board and chief academic officer. The new leadership has scrounged together enough help to put a brighter face on the grimy schools, where, in the past, more than a few classroom doors were torn from their hinges. State prisoners on a work program have stripped floors, fixed doors and repainted walls. A local minister engineered donations of thousands of books and a huge cache of school supplies.
The state has placed an academic coordinator and two academic coaches in the schools to help teachers sharpen their skills and better coordinate their work.
"Right now the federal law is kind of far-removed from Altheimer," said William Thomas, Altheimer's chief academic officer. "Still, we have to make major changes."
For teachers here, change has meant a series of workshops in which they learned how to use graphing calculators and computers to illustrate math and science concepts; how to integrate writing across the curriculum; and how to give lessons and tests that relate more closely to state standardized tests.
Even in these sessions, the tremendous challenge of improving a poorly performing school system is clear. Holding up a copy of a school improvement plan, a document that details the changes state officials hope to make in the district, Karen DeJarnette, a state-appointed curriculum monitor who led several training sessions in Altheimer, asked how many teachers had read it.
Perhaps five hands went up among the more than 20 teachers in the room. "I am absolutely astounded that you had not read this," she scolded. "This is the contract between your school and the state Department of Education. This is very serious business."
Later, DeJarnette complained that the situation was no better in another session, where only a small handful of teachers reported attending training classes scheduled throughout the summer.
"I guess if you have gone through this for six years and nothing really major has happened, you believe that nothing will happen," said Thomas. "The challenge is: How do you implement change? I'm not sure the federal law will do anything to impact that. Education is a state activity, and it is overseen at the local level, and this is where change is going to have to happen."
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