Board Discusses NCLB's Impact on the District

By Nicole Achs Freeling
Greatschools.net Correspondent

With George W. Bush's education reform initiative No Child Left Behind soon to come up for reauthorization in Congress, school board members discussed the impact of NCLB on the district at a Committee of the Whole Meeting Monday night.

The board, along with the district and teachers, has been highly critical of NCLB and its members have lobbied heavily against it.

What is NCLB?

The discussion Monday began with an outline of the requirements of NCLB. The act requires states to set targets for students and categories of students to achieve proficiency in key subjects, as measured by state standardized tests. These targets determine whether a school makes "Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)." The goal is for 100 percent of students to reach proficiency by 2014. Schools and districts that do not meet growth targets two years in a row are deemed to be in "program improvement." SFUSD has 26 program improvement schools and this year it was deemed a program improvement district.

Critics of NCLB say the 100 percent proficiency target is unattainable. Rather than being measured by one national standard, proficiency is measured differently state by state. Commissioner Jill Wynns said California standards are especially high. "Proficiency" according to state standardized tests was designed to be higher than grade-level, and, in fact, to the level that would be on target to qualify for admission to the state university system. There are estimates, Wynns said, that every district in the state will be a program improvement district within the next three years.

NCLB has a number of other key requirements, including:

• That, by the end of this year, all teachers be "highly qualified." This means they must have a bachelors degree, have proper certification, and be actually teaching in the subject areas in which they are trained. District representative Ky Vu said 95 percent of SFUSD teachers will meet that requirement by the fall.
• That junior and senior students' contact information be made available to military recruiters, unless those students "opt out" of receiving information from both the military and college scholarship/financial aid organizations. The district, Vu said, has adopted a rigorous opt-out program, which informs students of the program and gives them the opportunity to opt out starting in the 9th grade.
• That the district allow students to transfer out of a program improvement schools to another school, and that the district provide transportation to the new school. This has not affected SFUSD much because of its choice-based enrollment system, Vu said. Only two students requested transfers this year under NCLB.
• That the district fund after-school tutoring for students who are testing below proficient and at program improvement schools. Under this provision, the district must use some of its federal funding to pay for tutoring services through private firms like Kaplan and Sylvan Learning Centers.

Impact On Curriculum

During the discussion, district representatives laid out several key areas in which they feel NCLB has negatively affected San Francisco schools. The biggest impact is in curriculum itself, district representatives said. "We're testing rigorously every three to six weeks," fifth-grade teacher Dawn Murmur said. "The curriculum is mediocre, dumbed down. It's an insult to the students and it's an insult to me."

One of the biggest impacts, board members agreed, has been the narrowing of curriculum at under-performing schools. Board members say this hurts the very students it's meant to help, by not offering them a rich curriculum that will excite them and keep them in school.

"One of the reasons test scores have gone up is people have learned what's going to be on the test, and they teach toward that, and the kids are being cheated," said Board President Mark Sanchez, who is an eighth-grade teacher. "[Meanwhile] the numbers go up and it makes it look like we're doing our job."

NCLB mandates that kids below proficiency take additional remedial classes in core curriculum rather than electives. Because of this requirement, electives have been virtually eliminated at some under-performing, mostly East Side, schools, according to Vu. "In some middle schools, kids are getting two to three hours of math and English a day," Sanchez said.

NCLB has also been controversial in the way it treats special-education students and English language learners. Critics say the tests are stacked against these students, and schools with high numbers of these students end up penalized for lower test scores.

Where the Act Stands in Congress

Some members of Congress including Democrats are pushing to have a bill reauthorizing NCLB out of the House of Representatives before the summer recess, and a Senate version could be taken up as early as the fall, according to UESF leaders. National Educators Association representative Cecil Cahoon said the fast timeline would pre-empt the kinds of rewrites needed to improve the program. And, if there were to be major revision, Bush might veto it, leaving NCLB standing as is, he said. He urged people to write to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voicing their opposition to NCLB in his current form. For more information on the letter writing campaign, Cahoon can be reached at ccahoon@nea.org.