Oregon may help revise No Child Left Behind law

Oregon hopes to become one of 10 states that will be allowed to try to demonstrate that a basic part of the infamous No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act can be improved.

Although he has been critical of some of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo’s recent actions — including her essential abandonment of the high school CIMs and CAMs — Sisters Superintendent Ted Thonstad applauds her initiative relative to the federal school accountability law.

Currently, the NCLB determines a school’s “Adequate Yearly Progress” by measuring the proportion of students at a given grade level who meet designated standards in tests on basic subjects. The required proportion ratchets up over time, so if X percent of third graders must meet the math standard this year, then a higher percentage must do so two years from now, and so on. By the year 2014, 100 percent of students are supposed to be reading, writing and doing math and science at grade level.

But recently, in response to heavy criticism, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced that 10 states would be allowed to conduct a pilot program using different systems. Those systems generally are described as “growth-based accountability models.”

Castillo announced last month that Oregon would try to become one of the 10. It proposes to track the performance of individual students over time. Instead of comparing the average math scores of third graders in 2005 with those of third graders in 2004, Oregon will compare the individual scores of third graders in 2004 with the scores of the same students as fifth graders. The changes in individual scores will be used to show whether the class as a whole, or different subgroups within the class (as required by NCLB), are making satisfactory progress.

Thonstad applauds this effort. “I’ve said for a long time that it makes no sense to compare one third grade class with another,” Thonstad told The Nugget last week. “What you’ve got to look at is individual student growth. That’s a better measure of what’s actually going on and it’s really what it’s all about.”

Educators are well aware that annual classes of students vary considerably in average ability. To illustrate his point, Thonstad said: “Let’s say you’ve got a really bright class of kids coming through, and when they get to the fifth grade you see 10 percentage points of growth in math (compared with their scores in the third grade). Then you get a class that’s more in the average range, that struggled in the third grade and didn’t score as high as the previous class. You’re going to be rated down because of that (under NCLB).

“But let’s say when this class gets to the fifth grade you’ve got 12 or 13 or 14 points of growth.” Even though their absolute scores may be lower than those of the class two years before “…you’ve really done a better job with that class of kids than you did with the other. But you’re doing to be marked down for what you did with that group and you’re going to get credit for what you did with the bright kids.

“That doesn’t make sense to me. We’re supposed to be individualizing education and yet we still want to compare apples and oranges.”

As another example, Thonstad noted that the federal law focuses heavily on subgroups such as special education students. He posed the hypothetical case of “a special ed kid in the fifth grade who’s reading at the first grade level. You’re going to be marked down…But let’s say in the sixth grade you get him to the third grade level in reading. You have made remarkable progress.” Yet, he said, no credit for that progress will be given under No Child Left Behind.

There is no certainty that Oregon will be chosen as one of the states allowed to experiment with different ways of measuring schools’ success, or lack thereof. Recent news stories out of Salem indicate that the Oregon Department of Education is scrambling to get its proposal together in time to meet the February 17 deadline that Spellings imposed.

Nonetheless, a strong effort is being made. It won’t be hurt by the fact that Castillo, a former Democratic legislator, has already announced her intention to run for re-election in November. Putting Oregon in the lead in a national search for ways to improve the widely unpopular No Child Left Behind act would be a significant feather in her political cap.