Va. educators cheer Obama promise to reform NCLB

RICHMOND — President-elect Barack Obama’s promise to reform No Child Left Behind is being cheered by some Richmond-area educators, who call the federal act unrealistic, bureaucratic and underfunded.

Henrico County Superintendent Fred Morton IV said Virginia has a strong assessment and accountability system and doesn’t need the federal government to tell school districts to do what they already were doing.

“I do not know of an educator who is not willing to work with all kinds of kids or not willing to deal with tough kids,” Morton said. “I think it’s an insult to the state and the General Assembly for U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to take credit for the achievement growth in Virginia when we were already well on the way.”

No Child Left Behind, signed by President Bush in 2002, set as a goal for 100 percent of students to pass the state’s Standards of Learning by 2014.

The law requires students in third to eighth grade and in high school to take the state’s standardized tests, which in Virginia are the Standards of Learning. NCLB has its own set of accountability standards in addition to what Virginia already was doing. A school can be fully accredited by the state but fail to meet the federal mark.

School administrators in each of the 20 localities in the Richmond region were asked for comments on NCLB.

“The law must be changed to allow greater flexibility to the states that already have rigorous standards and accountability in place,” said S. Dallas Dance, assistant superintendent for instruction in Louisa County.

Hanover County Superintendent Stewart D. Roberson said he has a problem with the benchmark of Adequate Yearly Progress, where schools have to meet 29 categories or fail. The law should recognize the progress schools make every year, he said.

“You don’t lead by hitting people over the head,” he said. “You don’t assure success by calling everyone a failure if they don’t achieve 100 percent of the goals 100 percent of the time. Presently, that is how NCLB is designed.”

Making Adequate Yearly Progress is particularly crucial for schools that accept federal money from Title I, a program that helps serve free and reduced lunches to needy students. Those that fail to make AYP face a number of federal sanctions, culminating in an alternative-governance operation in which an outside organization takes over.

Also, the goal of having all students performing at 100 percent in reading and math by 2014 is unrealistic, Prince George County Superintendent R. Francis Moore said.

“No school district will ever get to 100 percent success rate,” he said.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright, who has been named to a national task force that will advise the Obama administration on education issues, said the state also wants less reporting of data and a clarification on what is a “highly qualified” teacher, which the law requires for core subjects.

“We’ve been very clear that we need more flexibility in the type of assessments in English, reading, math and science, especially for the special-education population and students who are learning English,” Wright said.

For Joe Cox, Superintendent in Colonial Heights, flexibility in testing special-education students is a professional and personal quest. His daughter, Sophie, is a second-grader who has Down syndrome and soon will be taking tests under NCLB.

Cox said the federal government makes it too hard for local schools to tailor the application of tests to each student’s needs. In Sophie’s case, that means having passages from the reading-comprehension test read aloud to her, an accommodation for which Cox said he continually has to fight.

“As a superintendent, I submit that this is patently unfair and adversely impacts test scores. As Sophie’s dad, I am frustrated that my little girl who works so hard will face an unnecessary obstacle in her progress,” he said.

The General Assembly has approved legislation stipulating that unless a reauthorization of the act provides more local control, the Board of Education is to make a recommendation on whether the state should withdraw from the law.

Pulling out would mean losing the funding that comes with NCLB. For Virginia, that means an estimated $418 million. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is opposed to a pullout.

Critics also say the law is not fully funded, which is something Obama has promised to change.

The U.S. Department of Education calls this a myth. In fiscal 2009, Bush allocated $24.5 billion for No Child Left Behind, up 41 percent from 2001, according to the department.

A 2005 Virginia Board of Education report on the cost of implementing No Child Left Behind for school localities found that funding came up short about $62 million.

Hopewell Superintendent Winston O. Odom is hopeful federal funding will increase.

“I am optimistic that President Obama’s review and revisions will cause NCLB, if it withstands the reform provisions by Congress, to reach its original intent with funding to support it.”

That depends on who’s advising Obama on education matters, said Dinwiddie Superintendent Charles Maranzano, who said he believes NCLB sets up states and school systems for failure.

“Obama needs to surround himself with real educators, not political appointees who have little or no experience in America’s classrooms,” he said.

Juan Antonio Lizama is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.