For all the many years that the Congress has put Federal dollars into state education agencies and local public schools since 1965, the assumption was that the additional Federal dollars would help cause better results.

Surveys required by public agencies and many surveys performed by private groups all across the country for the past 35 years did not show the improvement that had been taken for granted. However, Federal funding continued to flow and school groups and many parent organizations argued annually for an increase in Federal funds.

Now, as many state governments do not want to be held accountable for the data on testing all students and the spending of Federal funds, they are literally sending Federal money back to the US government. America, why is this ok (or, where is the outrage)?

October 28, 2004
Group of 640 Starts Transferring From Failing Schools
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES

The first crop of students allowed to transfer out of their failing New York City schools this year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act will start arriving at their new schools today, the Department of Education said yesterday.

Although nearly 5,000 students indicated they were interested in leaving their failing schools, only 640 have been given the chance so far because the number of seats in better schools is limited, said a department spokesman, Keith Kalb. The students in the first group were identified as the poorest and lowest-achieving. The failing designation for the schools they left was based on test scores and other factors.

More students will be allowed to transfer later, Mr. Kalb said, after it becomes clear how many seats remain available.

Last year, all 7, 000 city students who wanted to transfer out of their failing schools under the federal law were allowed to do so, but about 300,000 were eligible. This year, officials are limiting the number of transfers, saying they did not want to overburden other schools.

That decision has angered some lawmakers and children's advocates, who said they believed that with proper planning and organization, even several thousand transfers should not have overwhelmed a system that has 1.1 million schoolchildren and more than 1,200 schools. The department has also been criticized for offering the transfers more than a month into the school year and for declining to offer any transfers to high school students.

Jill Chaifetz, executive director of Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group, said the appeal of transferring decreases as time passes: children get more settled in their schools and a move to another school seems more disruptive.

"As a parent, you want your kid to feel secure and have friends and be comfortable with the curriculum," she said. "As you go farther into the school year, that becomes less and less likely."

Education officials have indicated that they have identified fewer than 1,400 slots at schools that children can transfer into. Each of the 640 in the first group of transfers was given two choices of new schools, or the option to stay put. Once their decisions have been tabulated, Mr. Kalb said, a second wave of students will be allowed to transfer.

Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council Education Committee, said the department had not tried hard enough to find more seats.

"The fact that there are 640 transfers is clear, incontrovertible evidence that the department has decided to abandon choice for poor people," she said. "Yes, there are areas that are severely overcrowded, and it's understandable that you wouldn't want to put children in those spots, but there are schools that are not fully utilized, where they could accommodate this very limited number of children."

Schools Are Breaking Law On Transfers, Suit Charges
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES, October 16, 2004

The New York City Department of Education has violated state law by seeking to limit the number of students allowed to transfer out of failing schools, according to a class-action lawsuit filed yesterday.
The lead plaintiff in the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is Jessica Lopez, who is still waiting to see if her 5-year-old twins will get to transfer out of their failing Queens elementary school.

According to the federal No Child Left Behind Act, children who attend schools that receive federal anti-poverty money and are deemed failing should be given the option to transfer elsewhere.

A similar suit challenging the city's compliance with the law was dismissed last year after a judge ruled that the plaintiffs -- parents -- did not have legal standing to sue. The new lawsuit takes a different tack, hinging on state education regulations that were adapted to conform with the federal law. States are charged with ensuring that their school districts comply with No Child Left Behind.

Last year, 7,000 New York City schoolchildren, in all grades, transferred out of failing schools under the federal law. This year, however, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein is limiting the number of transfers, saying he did not want to overcrowd schools that would receive the transfer students.

To limit the number of students seeking transfers this year, the Department of Education deemed high school students ineligible, saying the high school admissions process had already afforded them the element of choice that the law requires. That decision has been heavily criticized by some parents and public officials.

The suit filed yesterday identifies as members of the class only those children -- fewer than 5,000, city education officials said yesterday -- who have applied for transfers. But Charlie King, a lawyer in the case, said the class would be expanded to include all of the more than 300,000 children who attend schools labeled failing. Mr. King said he believed parents were discouraged from seeking transfers, partly because they were being offered so late. A month into the school year, the transfers have yet to be granted.

Chancellor Klein said he believed the suit had no merit and observed that Mr. King's earlier suit had been dismissed. He also said that no transfer requests had been rejected this year. Officials have said they hope not to reject any of this year's transfer requests, a hope based on the assumption that two-thirds of those who asked to transfer will decide to stay put.

''There's no purpose whatsoever to take a high-performing school and make it overcrowded, dysfunctional and unsafe,'' Mr. Klein said. ''We're in compliance with No Child Left Behind. We're doing it sensibly, intelligently and doing what's right for our kids.''

Ms. Lopez is among the parents who are awaiting word on whether their transfer requests will be accepted. She said she was dismayed that her sons, Christopher and Dylon Parisi, had done little more than play and write their names at Public School 225 in Rockaway Park, saying, ''In kindergarten, you're supposed to learn a little bit more than that.''

October 5, 2004
Problems Seen for More Testing of U.S. Students
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY TIMES

LINK

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - A new federal requirement to sharply expand annual testing of students starting next school year faces serious obstacles, including unreliable data and a lack of clear and timely guidance from federal officials, according to a government report.

The report, by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found wide variation in the rules that states use to measure progress under No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has been one of President Bush's major domestic initiatives. The variation makes comparisons between states meaningless, the report suggested.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools face a rigorous timetable of academic challenges in the coming years. Starting with the 2005-2006 school year, they must test students in Grades 3 to 8 annually on reading and math, and in 2007, they must also begin testing in science. By 2014, the law demands that all students become proficient in reading and math. Failure to meet the targets brings severe consequences, including, ultimately, possible school closings.

The G.A.O. report, which was released late last week, said that more than half the state and school district officials interviewed said they had been "hampered by poor and unreliable student data," with Illinois, for example, reporting data problems in 300 of its 1,055 school districts. About half of 21 state officials interviewed said the law's tight deadlines impeded their ability to carry out the law's promises.

The report also recalled that when the federal Education Department said that it had approved plans from all states for carrying out No Child Left Behind in June 2003, it had in fact completely approved only 11 plans, with the rest receiving conditional approval. As of July 31, 23 states and the District of Columbia still had only conditional approval.

The investigators said that state officials remained uncertain about how to obtain full approval, and they recommended that the federal Education Department give the states written guidelines and time frames. In a letter to the G.A.O., Eugene W. Hickok, under secretary of education, rejected the recommendation.

"The department already has a process in place to move states toward full approval," Mr. Hickok wrote. The existing system, he added, had resulted in an additional 22 states that previously had conditional approval reaching full approval.

Mr. Hickok said the department and the states had made great strides in creating an accountability system from scratch. "Although the G.A.O. has tried to capture some of this energy and effort in its report, states, school districts and the department have made far more progress than the draft report suggests," he wrote.

Coming just a few days before the next presidential debate, which is to focus on domestic policy, the report inevitably became fodder for new attacks on the administration about enacting No Child Left Behind. In February, Congressional Democrats first wrote to Education Secretary Rod Paige to question the handling of the law, saying that the department had been slow to provide states with the necessary guidance.

Representative George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said, "The report is a surprise only in the sense that it displays such a massive disconnect between what the president and the Education Department have been telling Congress and the public about how well No Child Left Behind is going, and the facts on the ground."

Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said, "The administration is working fully with districts to make sure that the kids get the education and the resources they need to get a better education." He added, "There's more resources, there's a record amount, and we want to make sure the accountability is in place, and the data shows that students are improving."

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Reading, PA 2003-2004 NCLB District Report Card

Reading School District 2003 PASA Report

The 2003 PASA Report summarizes the scores for all students with severe disabilities who reside in the Reading School District, regardless of who provides educational services for these students.
PA Accountability System-NCLB

District sues Pa. over No Child Left Behind mandates

School district fights state over No Child Left Behind sanctions

No Child Left Behind Data by State

Living (or Dying) With Your NCLB Tests Schools' ability to meet expectations will depend on tests' instructional sensitivity

FORMAL LEGAL CHALLENGE TO "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" IS FILED IN COURT

Reed Martin, J.D.
Several school districts around the country have rejected Federal money under the No Child Left Behind Act (generally referred to as Title I) assuming that will relieve them of the responsibilities under the recent amendments to that Federal education act.

And now, the Reading, Pennsylvania school district has sued to overturn the law as it applies to them, according to the New York Times, January 2, 2004.

Reed Martin Conferences will be doing a day long workshop on No Child Left Behind in Reading on January 29, 2004 and in Pennsylvania's state capital, Harrisburg, on January 30.

Interested persons can contact us at connie@reedmartin.com for more information.

No Child Left Behind , now in its third year of a multi-year implementation, requires among many other things that schools must test students to demonstrate "Adequate Yearly Progress." Documenting such progress, or an absence of progress, is absolutely key to the purpose of NCLB.

For all the many years that the Congress has put Federal dollars into state education agencies and local public schools since 1965, the assumption was that the additional Federal dollars would help cause better results. Surveys required by public agencies and many surveys performed by private groups all across the country for the past 35 years did not show the improvement that had been taken for granted. However, Federal funding continued to flow and school groups and many parent organizations argued annually for an increase in Federal funds.

This writer has long argued that it was not a lack of money that was the problem for our students with disabilities. The problem was that school districts took the money and then failed to do what they had promised to do when they applied for the funds.

Students with disabilities, which is our focus of concern, were not being discovered through an aggressive "Child Find" effort, were not getting the pre-school education that was required, were not
getting accelerated programs in the early grades and their parents were having to fight to finally get them
on the rolls for special services.


The lack of success of students receiving special education services in comparison to other students was documented, their drop out rates were known, and their inability to get a diploma that would be recognized by employers or educational institutions was heart-breaking to families and to the students.

Students with disabilities are covered under "Title I" which is the source of the current legal action, but
they are also covered, of course, by what is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ability of a parent to see everything that is being written down about their student, so that the parent can make their own judgment whether the student is receiving what they are entitled to under the Federal statutes, is authorized under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

This new legal action is over a key feature of the recent amendment, called No Child Left Behind,
because that statute not only evaluates for improvement -- it punishes a school district for lack
of improvement. The punishment takes several levels which could include removing certain Federal
funds from the school or supporting parents who move their children to other public or even private schools.

The thousands of pages of draft legislation, Congressional debate, Conference Reports, statutes and regulations (which this writer has read) cannot be boiled down here into a few simple words. This writer was Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough (D-TX) who chaired the Senate Education Committee when special education legislation was first being formulated and passed and knows how complicated this new Federal amendment is.

However, the sticking point is that if a required testing cycle shows that a school district has not made AYP for a specific group, then there are penalties assessed. A school district might lose some money and might also have to expend extra dollars. A school board member in Reading stated "This law can just overwhelm a school system's ability to meet its requirements, especially when a district is financially stressed as we are."

In recent weeks, according to the Times, three Connecticut school districts have rejected Federal money, assuming that will relieve them of the "red tape" and several Vermont school districts have shifted Title I money away from failing schools in the hope that will shield those schools from receiving sanctions.

The Times repeated a comment, supposedly from a teacher who felt the law was taking everything away, who called the law "No behind left."

One of the problems which administrators single out for unfairness is a Connecticut school in which 100% of the students scored at or above the proficient level on the most recent reading test and 99% scored above that level on math. However, only 94.3% of the class participated in the math test, which was .7% below the requirement of 95% participation so the school could not claim to have made Adequate Yearly Progress and would possibly lose funding. That school board had already taken care of the problem, however, because it had already voted to reject the Federal Title I funds.

We will explore further on this website the arguments being made by the attorney representing the school district in this action.

PA NCLB Position Paper