Confusion
results from 'no child' list
State adds,
deletes schools on fed law rolls
Saturday, August 07, 2004 • BY JOHN MOONEY •
Star-Ledger Staff
Before New Jersey releases
its next list of schools that fall short under the No Child
Left Behind Act, the state yesterday did some final tweaks
of its old list and added and removed dozens from the
unflattering rolls.
State officials announced
38 more schools, based on their 2002-03 scores, have been
added to the group deemed as failing to meet requirements
under the new federal law -- and suddenly now facing new
potential sanctions as well.
More than 70 schools were
taken off the rolls, essentially giving them a clean
slate.
Officials blamed the
timing on a series of glitches and delays that has plagued
the state's testing for much of the last year, and said late
changes to just a few students in a given school could move
it on or off the list.
In all, nearly 1,000 of
New Jersey's 2,500 schools remain with the label of "needing
improvement" or in so-called "early warning"
status.
"We are pleased to be
finally getting to the end of this testing cycle," said
state Education Commissioner William Librera yesterday,
pledging the testing problems have been
addressed.
But both state and local
officials conceded there is likely to be some confusion with
the next list, based on 2003-04 scores, expected to come out
by the end of the month. They didn't rule out the
possibility that schools added or removed yesterday could
find themselves heading in the other direction by the end of
the month.
"Unfortunately, this law
is going to cause confusion for the next 10 years," Librera
said. "We are trying to minimize that."
Others say the state has
been especially slow in finalizing its data, and the whole
process has been problematic from the start.
"It's all related to a
larger issue of the state's capacity to analyze data in a
timely fashion so that it can be of use to a community, the
schools and the parents," said Diana Autin, co-director of
the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network.
The state's school board
association worried that the public will be befuddled when
the next list of under-performing schools comes out. "I'm
sure the public will have trouble differentiating between
the two," said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the
association.
With many administrators
and educators on summer breaks, the announcement on a Friday
afternoon in August caught a few by surprise. The highly
regarded McNair Academy High School in Jersey City saw its
name removed from the under-performing list, while equally
touted high schools like Pascack Hills and Wayne Valley saw
their names added.
Sometimes it occurred
within the same community. West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional
High School's north campus was added to the list of schools
falling short, while its south campus was
removed.
Local officials said they
were waiting to hear why, although they said the previous
labels had been largely based on differences in the number
of students with disabilities in each school. Either way,
the board president said the latest release leaves his head
spinning.
"We're either on or off,
it seems, depending on the list at the time," said Hemant
Marathe, the board president. "I worry about the public
perception, but I am comfortable in saying we serve all of
our kids well."
The new federal law
requires schools to show that all of their students -- no
matter the income, race or ability -- make steady progress
in their standardized test performance, toward the ultimate
goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by
2013.
Those that fall even one
student short in any one of more than 40 categories in a
given year are deemed as "needing improvement," and if they
do not improve, can face penalties such as requirements to
allow students to transfer or receive free private
tutoring.
In the second year of the
state's implementation of the law, scores of New Jersey
schools found themselves last year on or off the watch lists
based on just a small handful of students. As test scores
were then revised, with some special education results from
a year ago finalized only this summer, state officials
conceded that some schools were clearly mislabeled for the
last year.
They stressed no schools
removed yesterday from the lists had previously faced any
sanctions, though, as all had been in a first-year "early
warning" category in which no penalties were meted
out.
"It's a mixed blessing,"
Librera said. "For the 71 schools taken off, they will
certainly be happy ... For the other 38, they find
themselves in a different situation. We wish, as the
districts surely do, too, to have known this
earlier."
Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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