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CAPITAL REGION
Students improving on state math, English examinations
BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter

Local students improved their scores on math and English Language Arts tests as did students across the state, according to data released Monday by the state Education Department.
    More than 80 percent of students in grades three through eight achieved the math standards, which is an increase from 73 percent last year. The number of students meeting English standards increased from 63 percent to 69 percent.
    These standardized tests are taken by students during the school year and are graded on a scale of one to four with three considered proficient and four above average.
    In the Schenectady City School District, the scores were about 10 percent higher on the math test and about 5 percent better on the English Language Arts test. Superintendent Eric Ely said the district also saw a 2 percent drop in the number of students that scored at level one.
    “We’re having more and more students getting closer to profi - ciency,” he said Monday.
    Ely attributed the better increase in math to the fact that it is more fact-based. “It’s much more concrete for kids,” he said.
    In an urban environment, Ely said, students are not being exposed to reading and writing at an early enough age. Also, English is a second language for some students. The school district is stressing reading and writing, even in music and gym. “We are so focused on literacy across all of our content areas,” Ely said.
    Also, starting this fall the district will extend the school day by 30 minutes at all grade levels. However, he said improvements from these changes may not be noticed right away.
    Even with this progress, Ely said, only 47 percent of the students have achieved at or above grade level results for the English tests and only 59 percent in math.
    “It’s better than it’s been but it’s not good enough,” he said.
    All of the city’s three middle schools are on the federal “needs improvement” list. Ely said they all showed dramatic improvement in their test scores. However, they will not get the schools off the list because the district is having difficulty in raising the scores of students with special needs and those who speak English as a second language.
    The International Charter School of Schenectady, which is closing its doors Thursday — after the SUNY board of trustees did not renew its charter — had a larger percentage of its students achieve a three or better than the district in all but sixth grade in math. It also outperformed the district in grades three, four and five for English.
    Peter Murphy of the New York State Charter Schools Association said it is a “travesty” that the school faces closure, given these numbers.
    “The Charter Schools Institute really made a bad call here and they need to take a serious look at this fatally flawed review process that has taken away a successful option for the students of Schenectady,” he said.
    The board of trustees used test score data from 2007 to justify its closure decision.
    In Scotia-Glenville, Superintendent Susan Swartz said she is still studying the numbers, but said the district showed a slight uptick in English scores for some grades, as well as some nice gains in mathematics. Swartz said more than a year ago, the school implemented a new math curriculum and teachers have received professional development. She said these test scores tell them what the educators could do differently and identifies students who might need more services.
    However, they are only one piece of the puzzle.
    “These really are snapshots in time. I try to look at them, not as the only measure, but of part of what we look at to make sure we’re making the best possible decisions for instruction of our children,” she said.
AMSTERDAM
    The Greater Amsterdam School District also improved its math scores by an average of 7.4 percent and its English scores by an average of 2.6 percent.
    Superintendent Ronald Limoncelli said he was pleased with the results and said that the district’s middle school may be removed from the “needs improvement” list with these math scores. He said the scores were a result of a team effort between the teachers, administrators and students.
    “They knew what they had to do and they did it,” he said.
ALBANY
    The Albany City School District also saw gains. Overall, for grades three through eight, 14 percent more students achieved level three or four on the English test and 21 percent at the two highest levels in math.
    “We’re extremely pleased with the results we’re seeing,” said district spokesman Ron Lesko. “While we’re not where we want to be, we made strong gains.”
    Lesko attributed the improvements to the district’s partnership with the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education — in its second year of implementation — which has provided professional development for teachers. The district has had math coaches working with teachers for three years, and starting this year it implemented literacy coaches. In addition, the district has assessment teams in all of its elementary schools that can spot much earlier students lagging behind.
GLOVERSVILLE
    Gloversville school officials said their middle school special education students did “remarkably well” on the English language arts test and they anticipate an announcement from the state removing the middle school from the list of schools in need of improvement.
    The special education students raised their ELA index score from 92 last year to 113 — above the state threshold of 106.
    “It’s been a three-year journey,” said Assistant Superintendent Roger Rooney, the school official charged with restructuring the curriculum after the special education test scores triggered the “in need” designation.
    Superintendent Robert DeLilli said the state may not remove Gloversville from the list until October — too late to save the district from the cost of instituting the state Education Department’s Contract for Excellence program. Students in the program receive extra aid to implement new programs aimed at improving performance.
    Because Gloversville had a school in need as of April 1 and then was earmarked for at least 10 percent in additional state aid, the district was targeted as a Contract for Excellence participant.
    School officials protested the compulsory enrollment in the contracts program in anticipation that the January 2008 test results would remove Gloversville from the “in need” list. Legislators sponsored a bill that would remove the district, but after passing in the Senate it stalled in committee in the Assembly.
    Rooney, who announced his retirement Monday, said the district’s own restructured curriculum already addresses what the contracts program would impose on Gloversville.
ALBANY CHARTERS
    Albany’s charter schools scored the highest on the tests. They earned seven first-place rankings in math and English, according to a press release. The Brighter Choice Charter School for Boys had a 97 percent rate for third grade, which is more than 20 points higher than the Albany district average and a 95 percent pass rate in fourth grade. The KIPP Tech Valley charter middle school swept the top spot in grades five, six and seven and the seventh grade had a 100 percent pass rate.
    For the English Language Arts test, the Brighter Choice Charter School for Girls had a number one rank in fourth grade and a 75 percent pass rate. For seventh grade, KIPP Tech Valley middle school had a 91 percent pass rate.
    State officials were also pleased with the gains made by black and Hispanic students statewide. The number of black students achieving the English language standards increased from 45 percent last year to 53 percent this year. For math, it increased from 55 percent to 66 percent. Hispanic students meeting the standards increased from 46 percent to 53 percent for English and from 61 percent to 71 percent for math.
    Education Commissioner Richard Mills said schools showed progress.
    “Successful schools applied effective methods: stronger curriculum, extra help for kids who needed it, continuous professional development to support teachers, and a clear message from leaders at every level — the children can learn these concepts,” he said in a press release.

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High school grad can't read diploma
East Greenbush alumnus with dyslexia is suing district

By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau
First published: Saturday, May 17, 2008

ALBANY -- David Streck graduated from East Greenbush's Columbia High School back in 2002 but he's never read beyond a third-grade level.
Show a business card or other written document to him and he'll give it a brief stare and tell you the words are meaningless.
     
It's not for lack of brain power. Streck, 25, said he passed high school math with little problem and he enjoys using computer spreadsheets and building Web sites.
When he drives, he navigates by memory rather than street signs.
But he knows that his future prospects are dim if he can't read instructions on a job application, respond to e-mails or even go through the newspaper want ads.
So he's in federal court, trying to get the East Greenbush school district to pay tuition at a special school for people with dyslexia, a neurologically based inability to process some forms of information such as written words.
While his case, which was heard Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit could take months or even years to fully resolve, it highlights a puzzling fact -- every year when high schools graduate yet another class, some students earn diplomas without having the most basic skills.
Depending on one's views, this proves either that youngsters with handicaps are no longer shunted aside, or that schools don't make enough effort to help those with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and they simply push them through the system.
The latter is what Streck's mother, Donna, says happened to her son. She recounted how she struggled in vain to get him the help she thought he needed while at East Greenbush.
David's high school years sound like the kind of struggle that lots of parents go through when their child has a learning disability: endless requests for more or different evaluations or additional programs or even requests to send the youngster to a special school.
His special help periods, he said, were often no more than study halls as special education teachers basically threw up their hands in frustration at his severe dyslexia.
Donna Streck also contends that the periodic progress reports for her son gave the false impression that he was making progress.
For his high school exams, he had special helpers who would read him the questions.
By the time David was a senior, he wanted to stay in school to continue learning to read but the district wouldn't let him, he said.
So after high school Streck enrolled in Landmark College, a special Vermont-based school that works with dyslexic students. The $43,000 annual tuition proved to be too much for the family, though, so he left after a year.
The Strecks want East Greenbush to pay for at least another three years at Landmark or a similar school where he can try to learn to read.
"That's our ultimate argument here," said Fred Hutchison, the lawyer representing the family. "She put her entire faith in the school district on this. They told her he was doing fine from elementary school up to graduation."
East Greenbush district lawyer Jacinda Conboy, citing privacy laws, said she couldn't comment on the allegations.But Superintendent Angela Guptill, while not talking specifically on the Streck's case, said disabilities such as dyslexia can lead to frustration on all ends. The use of helpers to read exams, Guptill said, is an effort to make sure that students can prove they have mastered a course's content, despite their disability. One East Greenbush student a few years ago, said Guptill, had a reader and a scribe help her with exams and she went on to a top college.
The use of readers becomes complicated, though, for an exam like an English test, where it's difficult to separate the ability to decode or make sense of letters and words, and to comprehend a written passage. "It depends on what you are measuring," said Kathleen Boundy, co-director of the Boston-based Center for Law in Education.
Some students, Boundy said, may never learn to read but that doesn't mean they are incapable of learning.
"The issue becomes, are you holding these youngsters back who may never learn to read. But that doesn't mean they are incapable of learning to high levels."
Rick Karlin can be reached at 454-5758 or by e-mail at rkarlin@timesunion.com.

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Administration proposes changes in law
No Child Left Behind would address dropouts, minority achievement
BY NANCY ZUCKERBROD The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — The Bush administration sought to bolster its signature education law last week, announcing new rules designed to address the nation’s dropout problem and ensure that close attention is paid to the achievement of minority students.
    Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced that among the proposed changes being made to the No Child Left Behind law is a new requirement that by the 2012-13 school year, all states would have to calculate their graduation rates in a uniform way.
    States currently use all kinds of methods to determine their graduation rates, many of which are based on unreliable information about school dropouts, leading to overestimates.
    States will be told to count graduates, in most cases, as students who leave on time and with a regular degree. Research indicates students who take extra time or get alternatives to diplomas, such as a GED, generally don’t do as well in college or in the work force.
    While states will no longer be able to use their own methods for calculating grad rates, they still will be able to set their own goals for getting more students to graduate. Critics say that may allow some states to continue setting weak improvement goals.
MINORITY GRADUATES
    The administration’s proposed regulations would require schools to be judged not only on how the overall student body does but also on the percentage of minority students who graduate.
    Nationally, an estimated 70 percent of students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half.
    Critics of the six-year-old education law have complained that judging schools on test scores but not, to the same degree, on graduation rates has created an incentive for schools to push weak students out or into non-diploma tracks.
    No Child Left Behind requires testing in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school. The stated goal is to get all kids doing math and reading at their proper grade level by 2013-14.
    Spellings has been taking steps in recent months to make changes to the law from her perch, after efforts to rewrite the bill in Congress stalled. The proposed regulations amount to the most comprehensive set of administrative changes she has sought so far.
    “The Congress, I guess because of the political and legislative climate, has not been able to get a reauthorization under way this year,” Spellings said in an interview. “I know that schools and students need help now, and we are prepared to act administratively.”
    The regulations call for a federal review of state policies regarding the exclusion of test scores of students in racial groups deemed too small to be statistically significant or so small that student privacy could be jeopardized. Critics say too many kids’ scores are being left aside under these policies.
TUTORING NOTICES
    The regulations also call for school districts to demonstrate that they are doing all they can to notify parents of low-income students in struggling schools that free tutoring is available. If the districts fail to do that, their ability to spend federal funds could be limited. The department estimates only 14 percent of eligible students receive tutoring available to them.
    An even smaller percentage of kids who are allowed to transfer to higher-performing schools make that switch, in part because they aren’t always informed of vacancies on time. The regulations require schools to publicize open spots at least 14 days before school starts.
    The administration’s proposal also would tighten the rules around the corrective steps schools must take once they’ve failed to hit progress goals for many consecutive years.
    Spellings and others have said schools often take quick steps when reforming troubled schools, such as replacing principals, rather than taking more comprehensive action. “Real school restructuring is not a new coat of paint,” Spellings said.
    President Bush said in a statement last week that the regulations would “address the dropout crisis in America, strengthen accountability, improve our lowest-performing schools, and ensure that more students get access to high-quality tutoring.”
    The administration is seeking public comments before finalizing the regulations in the fall.
    Regulations can be overturned by a new administration. Spellings said that’s unlikely in this case, because the rules she is proposing have widespread support. She said she hoped the ideas would help shape any future debate on Capitol Hill.
    “I think these things will help the law work better in the fi eld ... and I think they are ways for the Congress to have a good jumpingoff place when they start on their work,” she said.
    Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate education committee, said the regulations “include important improvements for implementing No Child Left Behind.”
CRITICS RESPOND
    Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House education committee, said the new rules fall short of what’s needed. He said the Bush administration didn’t try hard enough to get a revised law through Congress.
    “The changes amount to tinkering with a law that needs signifi cant improvements, as most parents, educators, and students know,” Miller said.
    Miller had sought changes that included a merit-pay program to reward teachers who boost student performance, which teachers’ unions opposed. He also wanted to expand the criteria under which schools are judged, which drew criticism from the administration.

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Don’t dismiss goals of ‘No Child Left Behind’ so readily

    English teacher Peter Berger’s March 2 article, “Delusion of NCLB produces even more shortsighted remedies,” shouldn’t have blamed the federal No Child Left Behind Act for setting high expectations for the nation’s schoolchildren.
    Establishing a goal of proficiency for all students in core academic areas by the year 2014 is laudable and way overdue, not a “delusion,” as the author claims. Of course, schools should be expected to teach all children to reach proficiency — that’s their job. Unfortunately, it is only 2008 and teachers like Mr. Berger seem to have already given up hope of reaching this goal. Such low expectations by teachers are disheartening, to say the least.
    Worrying about schools narrowing their curricula to focus only on which subjects are tested is, however, a valid concern. Schools shouldn’t be taking a half-hour from, say, history and adding it to math for the sake of scoring well on a mandated exam. So what is wrong with simply extending the school day? Mr. Berger makes only passing mention of this reform, and relegates the option only for “students who need extra help.” But that’s part of the problem: Only one-third of eighth-grade students demonstrated proficiency in mathematics and reading in 2007 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the “nation’s report card.” It’s clear that all students could benefit from longer school days and longer school years.
    Schools ought to be held accountable for what students learn, and properly designed assessments are a great way to measure them. Establishing a goal that all children, students from low-income families, children of color, suburban kids, can show that they have achieved proficiency in core academic subjects by passing these tests isn’t asking too much. In fact, we’re asking for it far too late, but it’s better late than never.
    Teachers such as Mr. Berger should stick to encouraging his fellow faculty members to do everything in their power to help students achieve mastery of basic academics, rather than lobbing baseless
criticisms of federal education policy.
B. JASON BROOKS
Clifton Park
The writer is director of research and communications for the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability.

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‘No Child Left Behind’ compounded a mistake
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.
George Will

    No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it.
    NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly — 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism’s subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12.
    NCLB was supported by Republicans reluctant to vastly expand that intrusion but even more reluctant to oppose a new president’s signature issue. This expansion of Washington’s role in the quintessential state and local responsibility was problematic, for three reasons.
    First, most new ideas are dubious, so federalization of policy increases the probability of continentwide mistakes. Second, education is susceptible to pedagogic fads and social engineering fantasies — schools of education incubate them — so it is prone to producing continental regrets. Third, America always is more likely to have a few wise state governments than a wise federal government.
    With mandated data collections — particularly tests of “adequate yearly progress” in reading and math — NCLB was supposed to generate information that would enable schools to be held accountable for cognitive outputs commensurate with federal financial inputs. Bad data would make schools blush and reform.
    Fourteen months ago, the president said, “The gap is closing. ... How do we know? Because we’re measuring.” But about those measurements ... ?
    NCLB requires states to identify, by criteria they devise, “persistently dangerous schools.” But what state wants that embarrassment? The Washington Post recently reported that last year, of America’s approximately 94,000 public schools, the “persistently dangerous” numbered 46. There were none among the 9,000 schools in amazingly tranquil California.
    NCLB’s crucial provisions concern testing to measure yearly progress toward the goal of “universal proficiency” in math and reading by 2014. This goal is America’s version of Soviet grain quotas, solemnly avowed but not seriously constraining. Most states retain the low standards they had before; some have defined proficiency down.
    So says “The Proficiency Illusion,” a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which studies education reform. Its findings include:
    The rationale for standards-based reform was that expectations would become more rigorous and uniform, but states’ proficiency tests vary “wildly” in difficulty, “with ‘passing scores’ ranging from the 6th percentile to the 77th.” Indeed, “half of the reported improvement in reading, and 70 percent of the reported improvement in mathematics, appear idiosyncratic to the state test.” In some states, tests have become more demanding; but in twice as many states, the tests in at least two grades have become easier. NCLB encourages schools to concentrate their efforts on the relatively small number of students near the state test’s proficiency minimum — the students that can most help the state meet its “adequate yearly progress” requirements.
    Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican who represents western Michigan’s culturally cohesive Dutch Calvinist communities, opposed NCLB from the start because he thought it would “tear apart the bond between the schools and the local communities.” He believes the reauthorized version of NCLB will “gut” accountability. He is gloomily sanguine about that because he thinks accountability belongs at the local level anyway, and because removing meaningful accountability removes NCLB’s raison d’etre. He proposes giving states the option of submitting to Washington a “Declaration of Intent” to reclaim full responsibility for K-12 education. Such states would receive their portion of K-12 funds as block grants.
    But Rep. Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, warns that Washington, with its unsleeping hunger for control, steadily attaches multiple strings to block grants. He proposes to allow states to opt out from under NCLB’s mandates and regulations and to give residents of those states tax credits equal to the portion of their taxes their state would have received back in federal funds for K-12 education. Garrett thinks that this could be a template for states to escape many entanglements with Washington.
    NCLB intensified what Paul Posner of George Mason University calls “coercive federalism.” Kenneth Wong and Gail Sunderman of Brown University and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, respectively, say NCLB “signaled the end of ‘layer cake’ federalism and strengthened the notion of ‘marble cake’ federalism, where the national and subnational governments share responsibilities in the domestic arena.” Hoekstra’s and Garrett’s proposals would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out.