In its first two years, the federal law has required schools to increase standardized test scores each year for all their students, regardless of learning disabilities, unfamiliarity with English or physical and mental handicaps.
In Utah, where teachers are dealing with the largest class sizes and the lowest per-pupil funding in the nation, meeting those requirements has pushed the workloads of teachers and administrators to overflowing.
Utah will not meet a federal deadline for reporting test scores this year. That is unfortunate, but it is also no surprise, given the constraints of educating so many children with inadequate funding from the state Legislature and the Bush administration.
Formulating tests to meet federal No Child Left Behind requirements, then processing, verifying and reporting test scores is a time-consuming process, and it diverts attention from state-mandated programs designed to help students arrive at an adequate competency level before they graduate. NCLB has been underfunded from the start, and even its proponents in the Education Department have admitted it needs an overhaul to make necessary allowances for children with severe disabilities and for rural schools with few teachers and thin resources.
No matter, schools are being held to the original progress standards.
If a Title I school, one that receives federal funding based on parents' low income, fails to achieve "adequate yearly progress" in 10 categories related to the tests, students are entitled to transfer to a school that met its progress requirements. The Title I school must pay the transportation costs for the transfer.
Low-achieving students, many of whom come from families without the time and resources to get involved in their child's education, probably won't transfer. The children whose parents are able to be more supportive are more likely to leave, creating a school that is segregated by poverty.
The rigid focus on math and reading and the onus to meet federal standards on tests covering those two subjects means teachers have little time, energy or motivation to teach their overcrowded classes such things as geography and history, not to mention a foreign language, music or art.
Utah's education system, strapped for cash and overflowing with children, nevertheless has managed to hold its own on such indicators as ACT scores, high school graduation rates and college attendance.
So when one-third of the 800 schools in a state with that kind of record fail to make "adequate yearly progress" according to a federal standard, there is more wrong with the standard than with the schools.
