18 School Districts May Face Sanctions (NCLB)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tests1sep01.story

18 School Districts May Face Sanctions
The systems, which did not meet testing goals set by the No Child Left Behind law, will have three years to improve.
By Duke Helfand, Daryl Kelley and Jean Merl
Times Staff Writers

September 1, 2004

Eighteen California school districts that failed to meet federal goals in standardized testing for the second year in a row could face state takeovers or other sanctions if they do not show progress in the next three years, according to state data released Tuesday.

The small school systems, including the Centinela Valley Union High School District in the South Bay and Oxnard Union High School District in Ventura County, would be the first in California to experience tough new penalties under the federal No Child Left Behind education law.

Until now, similar federal sanctions applied only to individual schools.

Most of the districts wound up on the sanctions list because their students or a small segment of them scored too low on standardized exams. Others were named for not testing enough students, among other reasons. The school systems primarily serve high school students scattered in rural communities, including some in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.<snip>

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. In a few years, these systems can be privatized as one of the sanctions.

And because of the requirement for 'adequate yearly progress', schools must improve their performance every year, indefinetely.

(Try dieting like that sometime.)

Eventually every school in the country will be sanctionable.

And then they can privatize the lot.

No more teachers unions.

A nation of Protestant evangelical madrassas.

[papau]

2. I thought we were told we couldn't disclose Bushs plan -Oh -just the media

can't disclose - I forgot ....

National Security and all that

:-)

[LWolf]

3. If just one school, or a few schools, in a large district

don't make their "goal" for the 2nd year, the whole district gets hammered...even those schools who have regularly made their goals.

I'm in a big district...6th largest elementary district in CA, last count. We have a couple of schools out of 26 that have been "sanctioned." That means "consultants" come in to help them with a plan to "fix" things. Which means you do what they say, the way they say to do it, with the resources they tell you to use. And you pay big money to private for-profit consulting companies to come in and do "staff development" to re-train you to teach to the test. I'm not exaggerating here. I have heard, both from the so-called consultants and from a couple of superintendents, that we are supposed to be "teaching to the test." If it isn't going to be on the test, we're not supposed to waste valuable instructional time on it. In order to show compliance with all of these requirements, my district is working on "standardizing" all of the schools. We will all do whatever the sanctioned schools are ordered to, whether we met our goals or not. For this year, it means that we will all teach the same thing at the same time in the same way; even our bulletin boards have been prescribed for us.

In the past, we had the option to use multiple resources to deliver the "standards" to students. For example, we have language arts text books, but we also have classroom sets of novels and Jr. Great Books. We could move back and forth, and pick and choose according to the needs of our particular class. No more. We will all use just the text, on the same schedule, the same way. And we will take quarterly whole-district tests from that language arts series, which will be reported to the district so that the district can track compliance with the schedule.

[sea dee]

4. I SO hate NCLB.

I SO hate NCLB.

[Sterling]

5. Why. What don't you like about it?

nt