Student Movement - analysis of Bush's education plan

The fatal flaw in the Bush education plan

AS A FIFTH-GRADER AT OAK VIEW Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland, 11-year-old Roberto knew how to get his teachers attention. Sometimes he would sit in class and loudly click his tongue. Other times he'd drop things on the floor or pretend to fall asleep. Roberto talked in class, often using vulgar language, and interrupted other students. And he rarely came to school with his homework completed. His teacher's reprobations were always met with a sardonic roll of the eyes.

It wasn't long before Roberto landed in Peggy Salazar's office to discuss his disruptive behavior and poor academic performance. The acting principal of Oak View Elementary School coaxed some information out of her young student that helped to explain why he was struggling. Salazar learned that Roberto's parents were divorced. Sometimes he lived with his mother, sometimes his father--it depended upon whose financial situation was more stable at the moment. (Both parents work several low-paying jobs.) When Roberto switched parents, he also switched schools. As a result, he's attended four schools just in the last five years.

Peggy Salazar's school is filled with kids like Roberto. The majority are African American or Hispanic; 84 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches; and a quarter have limited proficiency in English. More important, they come and go as frequently as Roberto does. Of the roughly 300 students at Oak View Elementary, only one in four arrived from the local feeder school; the rest came from elsewhere. Which is to say, Roberto's situation is not the exception, but the rule.

This problem plagues principals like Salazar, whose schools are judged by how well students perform on standardized tests. Oak View's fate hinges on the Maryland School Performance Report, a test that includes the scores of transient students like Roberto, who may not have been in that school last year and may not be around next year. Salazar was never able to get Roberto to improve his classroom performance. "I am not going to be here long anyway, because I move a lot," he reasoned. "My report card doesn't even catch up with me." With standardized testing poised to play a more prominent role under President Bush's education plan, the problem of how to reach students like Roberto without punishing principals like Salazar is growing more acute.

On the Road Again

Bush modeled his education plan after the one he oversaw as governor of Texas. It's premised on the notion that annual testing is the best way to hold schools accountable for teaching kids. Schools that perform poorly will gradually lose federal funding. Those that don't improve will be shuttered. In order to "leave no child behind," as Bush likes to put it, every child is tested annually. But scores for certain groups of kids--minorities, poor, migrant farm workers, and the disabled--are measured independently. That way, educators get a clear picture of who's learning and who isn't. Schools can't mask an underperforming subgroup simply by factoring its scores into the broader student body's, and they can be held accountable for making sure that all groups improve.

The Texas system is a good foundation, but it has one overwhelming flaw: As Roberto's case demonstrates, annual tests can't distinguish who is learning and who isn't learning if they don't take account of the fact that the students being tested in any given school differ from year to year.

The bad news about the education plan Bush brought to Washington--as well as those passed by the House and Senate--is that the tests and the reporting requirements they mandate don't make this crucial distinction. Many schools, particularly the low-income schools Bush promised to target for reform, don't teach the same students from month to month, much less from year to year. Without measuring a school's mobility rate, standardized tests can't possibly offer an accurate snapshot of students' learning progress. So principals like Salazar--who may be doing an excellent job teaching those children under their purview all year--are unfairly blamed, while parents whose kids attend the same school get a distorted view of the school's performance. Worse, if the poor performance of transient kids drags down such schools, an otherwise competent school could be shut down, forcing students like Roberto to move on once again.

Moving + Reading + Math = Failure

Transient students are a widespread problem. A General Accounting Office study found that one out of every six third-graders has attended three or more schools since entering the first grade. The problem is more acute in the inner city. A study of Chicago students revealed that fewer than half who entered school in first grade attended the same school in fourth grade. Some schools retained fewer than 30 percent of their first-graders. A New York Times investigation found that 40 percent of the students in a typical New York City classroom changed schools over the course of the year. When classrooms resemble bus terminals, it's easy to see how most standardized tests fail to accurately measure school performance. In the real world, many kids are just passing through.