Seven months after President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, and one month after the U.S. Department of Education announced that children at 8,652 low-performing schools are now eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools, some states and school districts are giving the new law's approach to failing schools a chilly embrace. In Michigan, where high state standards for adequate yearly progress have resulted in half of the state's elementary and middle schools being declared failing, a coalition of groups is pushing the state board of education to ease the standard by which a school is declared failing. A district official in Cleveland complains that the law "is systematically taking the rug out from under these [failing] schools" and warns that choice and supplemental services requirements could drain struggling schools of money and motivated students, before conceding that "the high profile of this accountability system should get us focused."
Some school districts seem bent on thwarting the new law. In South Carolina, a handful of districts with failing schools say they won't offer parents the choice of transferring their children out of low-performing schools. "We feel we've made adequately yearly progress," said a representative of one district that has an underperforming school on the state list. Another district claims that a court-mandated desegregation order spares it from having to offer students a choice of schools, though a letter from Secretary of Education Rod Paige says that school districts under desegregation orders are not exempt. Districts with failing schools that have no other school offering the same grade can, but are not required to, make transfer arrangements with neighboring districts, and several South Carolina districts have chosen not to make these arrangements.
In Chicago, where 179 schools with 125,000 students have been identified as failing, students at just 50 of these institutions will be allowed to transfer to better schools this fall-and they may only transfer to a school within about three miles of their home school, cutting off access to some of the city's better-performing schools. Parents at the "lucky" 50 schools have been given approximately two weeks to submit a transfer application.
Districts like Chicago that are rationing choice may be way off in their estimates of the number of parents who will use this option. In Howard County, Maryland, only 63 of 2,300 eligible children applied for transfers out of failing schools, and only 49 of these accepted their new assignments. Could the low numbers be due to the fact that parents could not pick a school for their children? Instead they were assigned by the county to schools with higher test scores as close to their homes as possible. - Marci Kanstoroom
"Group wants to cut list of failing schools by changing standards," by Judy Putnam, Booth Newspapers (Michigan), July 31, 2002
"District sees setbacks under No Child Left Behind Act," by Alexander Russo, Catalyst Cleveland, June/July 2002 (This article includes a nifty chart showing the changes required by the No Child Left Behind Act and what Ohio must do or is already doing to comply.)
"Some targeted schools deny choice," by Gina Smith, Myrtle Beach Sun-News, July 28, 2002
"50 schools can send students to better ones," by Kate Grossman, Chicago Sun-Times, July 30, 2002
"Few parents accept school transfer option," by Tanika White, The Baltimore Sun, July 31, 2002