Utah Proposes Alternative to “No Child Left Behind”

KWAME HOLMAN:

In Utah, public school teachers want students to be jazzed up about taking the tests that decide whether the state will pass or fail under the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" program. But at the same time, many Utah politicians and educators are singing the blues. State schools Superintendent Patti Harrington:

PATTI HARRINGTON:

"No Child Left Behind" is a flawed federal law. The tenets of the law, of course, we agree with enormously. We believe in the philosophy entirely in Utah. But when you get to the details, it's very difficult to live with the law and to make sense of it as it relates to helping children succeed.

The law is based upon a premise that's inaccurate. It's based upon the premise that all kids will be proficient by the year 2014. That's unrealistic and, in my vocabulary, it's very ludicrous, as well.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The nation's public schools risk losing federal education funds, a major supplement to local spending, if they fail to meet the requirements of the three-year-old "No Child Left Behind" law. In Utah, 50 percent of schools were ranked as failing last year, according to the guidelines.

STATE REP. MARGARET DAYTON:

It's been interesting to me, as I've done legislation dealing with how the state is going to deal with all of these huge numbers of pages of rules and regulations.

KWAME HOLMAN:

State Legislator Margaret Dayton says the education law demands a lot while giving little.

STATE REP. MARGARET DAYTON:

The money that comes from the federal government with "No Child Left Behind" is equal to about 6 percent of our state budget. And yet, "No Child Left Behind" presumes to control 100 percent of what happens in the classroom. It wants to totally dictate our education policy.

CLASS:

I'll just say, "Yes I can! And I'll get there by and by."

KWAME HOLMAN:

Superintendent Harrington says her state has a better plan for raising student achievement and should be allowed to implement it. It's called U-Pass — the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students.

Under U-Pass, students in grades K-12 would be tested; high school seniors would be required to pass a competency test before graduation, and the state would determine every year whether a student has learned and progressed enough.

Tim Bridgewater, in charge of education for Utah's governor, says U-Pass evaluates each student, while the federal standards look at cumulative progress for all students in a school. He says Utah's is a better way to help the most at-risk students, minorities and the learning disabled.

TIM BRIDGEWATER:

We want to ensure that 100 percent of those kids in our system are actually moving from wherever they're at today to more than a grade level of improvement over a particular school year, and that's what the growth model approach. It monitors each of those students and says, "Okay, if you're two or three years behind in math, then we want to make sure that you grow more than a year for math."

And what we're trying to say is we want our schools to monitor each individual student and let them grow and improve, and through that process we believe we'll close the achievement gap.

TEACHER:

That's a funny word. Everybody say that: Perpendicular lines.

CLASS:

Perpendicular lines.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Under Utah's plan, at the end of the year, each school would receive a low, medium, or high score based on its students' test results. Low-performing schools would get extra help to improve their score. Utah officials say their way of identifying and correcting student deficiencies would cost the state less than an overly- bureaucratic mandate from the federal Department of Education.

But Ross Weiner of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit, the Education Trust, worries that the U-Pass system may not work.

ROSS WEINER:

If you're a student who either comes to school behind or falls behind, that proposal would mean you would never catch up to your peers in terms of learning. That system is in its development stages right now. It has never been operationalized. There are no set goals for student learning under the U-Pass system.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Utah points to Amelia Earhart Elementary in Provo, as an example of the difficulty states face in complying with "No Child Left Behind." The student body of 600 ranks at 80 percent proficiency on state-sanctioned tests. Under the proposed U-Pass system, Amelia Earhart would be listed as high achieving.

But last year, the federal Department of Education gave Amelia Earhart a failing grade, listing it as a school "in need of improvement." Amelia Earhart's principal, Rosemarie Smith, says the levels and categories a school must pass to comply with federal standards leaves no room for error.

ROSEMARIE SMITH:

Our children must make a certain score in order to pass the test. Then we have children who speak a second language who are put in a subcategory, and they must make a certain percentage in order to pass the test. And then we have children who are in special education; they too must make a certain percentage on the test in order to pass the test.

And when you put all those categories together with a certain percentage of children, there were 48 categories within our school. And so, when you put all those together, there were 48 ways that we could have failed the test. And we failed one out of those 48 categories, and one out of those 48 categories made us a failing school. And ours happened to be in the category of children with learning disabilities or special education.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Principal Smith says she takes funds that might have been used to hire a needed teacher to pay for one-on-one tutoring for children throughout the school.

BARRY NEWBOLT:

Now, if you look down here at South Valley —

KWAME HOLMAN:

Barry Newbolt is superintendent of the state's largest school district located in Salt Lake City. He says the federal dollars dedicated for "No Child Left Behind" are nowhere near enough to meet the law's requirements.

BARRY NEWBOLT:

We went through the suggested strategies in "No Child Left Behind," and we put a cost to it. We determined that in order to implement the majority of those strategies, it would cost our district alone — which is one of 40 in the state of Utah — about $182 million additional dollars to do this.

TEACHER:

Think about when something is really quick.

STUDENT:

Fast.

TEACHER:

They're fast.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Newbolt says it might be possible to meet " No Child Left Behind's" requirements if his district got the kind of generous federal funding it gets for Title I programs aimed at underachieving, economically disadvantaged students.

Midvale Elementary is one of five schools in the Salt Lake City District that does get substantial federal funding under title one. Principal Mark Riding puts those dollars to work hiring supplemental reading instructors to help more than 150 students such as these, who are behind their peers in reading.

TEACHER:

(Speaking in Spanish) Why do we use a protractor? What's the purpose?

KWAME HOLMAN:

And finding teachers who are bilingual. A majority of the largely Latino student body does not use English as a first language. Last year, despite the extra funding, Midvale Elementary barely received a passing grade under "No Child Left Behind," but not without a cost.

MARK RIDING:

I asked my teachers at the beginning of the year to give me four synonyms to describe this school. I was trying to identify the culture. And they could put down anything they wanted. The most frequently used word was "stressful."

I come in, I beat on them, you know, "we have to do well on the test guys. We've a lot at stake here. Your job's on the line. Your job's on the line. We don't want to be labeled a failing school. Come on. Let's go, let's go, let's go."

TEACHER:

Show me an acute angle. A puppy is cute and a puppy is a small dog.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Sixth-grade teacher Maury Tolman says forcing her students to reach federal, uniform achievement levels is unrealistic.

MAURY TOLMAN:

I feel just crunched and pressured to meet these expectations that are just not going to happen, especially when I look at my kids. That's just so frustrating to think that my student that have been in the United States for two years need to be able to perform at a sixth grade level. I mean, if my job's on the line because I'm doing my best, these kids are doing the best they can. Something's wrong.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Despite complaints like Utah's from other states, the "No Child Left Behind" law is credited in recent national studies with helping to improve test scores in 38 states and narrowing the achievement gap between white and minority students. The Education Trust's Ross Weiner says Utah simply needs to work harder on educating all of its young people.

ROSS WEINER:

Latino students in Utah have the second lowest level of achievement of Latino students anywhere in the country. Now compounding this problem, Utah's white students are not learning up to very high levels either, and I think the pressure to focus on those students and make sure they get up to standards is a lot of what has Utah so defensive about the "No Child Left Behind" Act. Ultimately what Utah is asking for is to not have to take responsibility for educating their students.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Ray Simon is the federal Department of Education's point person on implementing the "No Child Left Behind" Law. He says it's working.

RAY SIMON:

What the federal law does is asks states to go a little beyond what many of them were doing, and to look at individual subgroups of students. How are the white students doing compared with African-Americans, for example, or Hispanic students?

How are poor children doing compared with children whose parents are middle class in terms of income? How are special education children doing; children whose first language is not English? That was a change from what many states were doing.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Unhappy Utah educators and legislators had planned to push a bill putting Utah's approach to student improvement ahead of "No Child Left Behind." But last month, Utah's governor, Jim Huntsman, asked legislators to hold off until later this month to give him time to negotiate a compromise with the Department of Education.

Ray Simon says the Department is willing to listen to Utah's proposal, but some things are not open to compromise.

RAY SIMON:

Utah will have to understand, again, there are certain things that we won't negotiate. Subgroup accountability is non-negotiable. We want that. Narrowing the achievement gap is nonnegotiable We must have that. Proficiency for children to be able to read and write at grade level is nonnegotiable.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced her department would undertake a fresh look at state proposals to see if more flexibility could be granted under "No Child Left Behind."

Meanwhile, educators in a dozen other states who have complaints about "No Child Left Behind" are waiting to see if Utah's request for flexibility is granted before deciding to make similar requests themselves.