Overhaul Sought for School Standards

Changes may soon come to the sweeping Bush-era No Child Left Behind regulations, and to Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley, the overhaul just makes sense.

“We need some flexibility in these federal standards,” McGinley said. “Some schools, some students need extra time to hit the same standards.”

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan last week said states should be allowed to seek waivers for schools that do not meet No Child Left Behind standards.

The Obama administration has said it will allow waivers, but school systems must use testing data in performance reviews of teachers.

Like Charleston County, nearly 80 percent of U.S. public schools currently fall short NCLB standards, and all schools face a 2014 deadline to comply. The act requires that all students are proficient in math and reading by that date.

“But to maintain a law that is so fundamentally broken that teachers and principals and students reject and are rebelling against it because it doesn't make sense, to just sit here passively in Washington and do nothing, to me, would be the height of arrogance or the height of tone-deafness,” said Duncan in an interview with The Takeaway, a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International.

The problem, Duncan has insisted, is that states are simply lowering their standards to show that they are making adequate yearly gains in performance on standardized tests.

Labeling schools as failing simply because a few students don’t score to standards is unfair, McGinley said, using Wando High School as an example.

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That school will carry the “failing” label this school year after students with disabilities failed to show adequate yearly progress in language arts and in math this previous school year.

“Wando is rated excellent; students there earned $20 million in scholarships last year,” McGinley said. “That’s not a failing school.”

Four Mount Pleasant schools – Charles Pinckney Elementary, Moultrie Middle, Thomas Cario Middle and Wando – solely because disabled students did not show progress this academic year, according to state AYP figures.

If the federal government wants to label schools as failing, they should come off funding to help the schools improve, McGinley said. Barring that, the federal government should allow school systems to seek waivers for schools and student groups that need more time to show progress, she said.

“If they are going to give us these labels, they need to get us extra help,” McGinley said.

No Child Left Behind was President George W. Bush’s signature domestic issue, enacted within the first year of his presidency. Though it has problems, the act has at least heightened awareness of the gaps in performance seen across public education.

“The best thing about No Child Left behind is that it truly makes people pay attention to every subgroup,” McGinley said.