Bush's reforms to impact Blair

The Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has arrived at Blair, bringing stricter accountability measures that will "raise the stakes" for teachers and increase emphasis on testing, said Principal Phillip Gainous. If federal achievement standards are not met within three years, Blair could face reorganization.

No major changes in Blair's funding will result from NCLB, according to Chris Richardson, Montgomery County Director of academic support, federal and state programs.

Under NCLB, county and state teacher evaluations will be based largely on students' HSA scores. To prepare students, Gainous said, Montgomery County has now "aligned and pared down all the curriculum": taken out instructional material deemed irrelevant to tests.

Blair faces the threat of "re-organization," Richardson said, if scores on the HSAs are too low. If Blair fall short of federal standards for two consecutive years, the state will designate it a "school in need of improvement." If test scores are unsatisfactory for another year, Blair will be subject to school choice, meaning that district parents could choose to move their children into other, higher-performing county schools.

In the fourth year of sub-standard performance, Blair will be required to offer free tutoring and, in the fifth year, will have to add school in the summer months and revise the curriculum. If Blair fails to meet federal standards for six years, the state will restructure the school and take actions ranging from replacing all the staff to turning Blair into a charter school, Richardson said, adding that funds for all measures come out of the county education budget.

Gainous said that in a "worst-case scenario," restructuring could result in the corporatization of the school. "If the budget remains as it is, the state won't have the money [to run the school]. They could get rid of all the teachers and hire some profit-making company to run the school," Gainous said, noting that for-profit companies are already running several Baltimore City schools.

Gainous worries that budget restrictions imposed by the depressed economy will make federal reforms difficult to implement. "The states were screaming, ‘If we're going to do what you want us to do, then we need more money to provide the resources,'" Gainous said.

Assistant Principal Linda Wolf, like Gainous, sees the challenge inherent in meeting higher federal performance standards with diminished funds. "If they really want us to do a better job of closing the gap, we need to make our classes smaller," said Wolf. "And how can we do that when our population is growing and we're cutting staff?"

In addition to looking at schools' overall test results, NCLB breaks standardized test score data into eight groups: white, African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American students, special needs students, ESOL students and low-income students.

Each year, a certain percentage of students overall and students in each group must demonstrate the same level of proficiency on tests like the High School Assessments (HSAs). Should any single group fail to meet that standard, Richardson said, the school's progress will be considered inadequate. The percentage will rise each year until 2013-2014, when all students must be "proficient" in all tested subject matter.

Some teachers are concerned about the application of stringent standards to disadvantaged groups. ESOL resource teacher Joseph Bellino worries that it is unrealistic to expect that speakers of other languages, who have on average been in the U.S. for only two-and-a-half years, will be fully proficient in English. "There's no magic language pill. It happens over time," Bellino said.

Bellino also points out that because many tests used to evaluate schools are given to underclassmen, the results will largely measure knowledge that students gained before coming to Blair. This holds true especially for ESOL students, whose success in learning English quickly depends mostly on prior instruction received before immigrating. "The issue is, are you comparing something that the school has control over?" said Bellino.

Wolf fears that NCLB does not account for students' individual circumstances. "If you take a Magnet student with a 1600 on the SATs and a student who just got here from Nicaragua, and they're taking the same tests, yeah there's going to be a disparity," said Wolf. "I think it's a wonderful act. But can it be applied equally across the board? I don't think it can be."

As schools strive to meet these federal standards, teachers in Montgomery County now face higher accountability and strict consequences for unsatisfactory performance.

MCPS' Peer Assessment Review (PAR) committee program, which evaluates teachers based on students' achievement, is now three years old. According to Gainous, approximately 30 teachers were recently dismissed from MCPS after failing to improve their students' scores. However, he noted, about 100 teachers raised their students' performance.

Gainous feels the PAR program will improve MCPS' quality of teaching but exacerbate the existing staff shortage. "Whereas before a really poor teacher could survive for years, and maybe forever, now the idea is that they've got to be a really good teacher or let's get them some help. And if it doesn't help, let's get rid of them," Gainous said, adding that a similar program for administrators is currently being developed.

Gainous was optimistic about Blair's ability to meet standards. "The game has changed, and we've got to get kids prepared for high-stakes exams. The staff will step up," he said.

Teachers are also facing tougher training requirements from NCLB, which mandates that teachers in schools with large at-risk populations must be state certified or "highly qualified" in their subject field by June 2006, according to a Feb 12 memo from Superintendent Jerry Weast.

The memo said 40 percent of current middle school teachers could be deemed unfit to teach in their current positions depending on the state's definition of "highly qualified." Weast predicted a middle school staff shortage if too many of these teachers elect to move to the elementary level, where requirements are more lax, rather than take certification tests.

Weast deemed MCPS' ability to meet the requirements "strong," but said this could change if veteran teachers are required to take new exams or middle school teachers are required to obtain certification for specific courses.