Editorial: No Child Act will not help CA schools’ performance

When California’s K-12 education system’s test
scores recently ranked near rock-bottom above only Mississippi and
Louisiana, most agreed the schools must be improved.

Accountability has become the key word, but the reformers must
look at more than standardized test scores.

It is important to hold schools and teachers accountable ““
but it is more important to make sure educators have the resources
and training they need to succeed.

It is pointless to identify poorly performing schools unless the
state and federal governments are also prepared to help them become
better.

But the Bush administration has moved down the wrong path with
the No Child Left Behind Act and only seems interested in the
numbers, regardless of how they are achieved. School performance
should be based on more than standardized tests. Graduation rates
and students’ plans after high school ““ whether it be
going to a four-year university or a vocational school ““
should all be part of the equation.

The U.S. Department of Education is planning to tighten the
screws on California by preventing the state from excluding
low-income students from the overall achievement indexes. The state
could lose all federal funding if it does not comply with the new
accountability rules.

In a very narrow scene, the Department of Education is right:
Sacramento should not try to hide the terrible condition of the
state’s education system.

But the situation is more complicated than that, and there is a
very good reason for the state’s current policy: The No Child
Left Behind Act calls for poorly performing schools to face budget
cuts and even be closed down unless they rapidly improve.

California is desperately ““ and rightly ““ trying to
protect its teachers and students from these punitive federal
rules.

If anything, more resources should be directed at failing
schools ““ including for experienced teachers and reformers
who understand the difficulties faced in predominantly low-income
and minority areas.

Rather than worrying about standardized tests and the No Child
Left Behind Act, California should spend its time and money
improving those struggling schools.

And in the process, Sacramento must take a hard look at how
state money is distributed though the K-12 system.

A new report by The Education Trust-West indicates there is an
education spending inequality that follows both ethnic and
socioeconomic lines ““ despite the fact California supposedly
distributes money evenly to all school districts.

The report, titled “California’s Hidden Teacher
Spending Gap,” concludes that wealthy, largely white schools
hire the best teachers and thus are allocated more money than
poorer, predominately minority schools.

The poorer schools may hire an equal number of teachers, but
those teachers are often not as skilled and automatically receive
lower salaries. The effect is not necessarily deliberate ““
senior teachers often self-select better schools ““ but it is
potentially devastating. Those schools are stuck in a holding
pattern ““ and now the federal government is preparing to cut
their funding unless test scores improve.