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States Omitting Minorities' Test Scores

By NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON, BEN FELLER and FRANK BASS, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 36 minutes ago

Laquanya Agnew and Victoria Duncan share a desk, a love of reading and a passion for learning. But because of a loophole in the No Child Left Behind Act, one second-grader's score in Tennessee counts more than the other's. That is because Laquanya is black, and Victoria is white.
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An Associated Press computer analysis has found Laquanya is among nearly 2 million children whose scores aren't counted when it comes to meeting the law's requirement that schools track how students of different races perform on standardized tests.

The AP found that states are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting that requirement. And minorities — who historically haven't fared as well as whites in testing — make up the vast majority of students whose scores are excluded.

The Education Department said that while it is pleased that nearly 25 million students nationwide are now being tested regularly under the law, it is concerned that the AP found so many students aren't being counted by schools in the required racial categories.

"Is it too many? You bet," Education Secretary
Margaret Spellings said in an interview. "Are there things we need to do to look at that, batten down the hatches, make sure those kids are part of the system? You bet."

The plight of the two second-graders shows how a loophole in the law is allowing schools to count fewer minorities in required racial categories.

There are about 220 students at West View Elementary School in Knoxville, Tenn., where
President Bush marked the second anniversary of the law's enactment in 2004. Tennessee schools have federal permission to exclude students' scores in required racial categories if there are fewer than 45 students in a group.

There are more than 45 white students. Victoria counts.

There are fewer than 45 black students. Laquanya does not.

One of the consequences is that educators are creating a false picture of academic progress.

"We're forcing districts and states to play games because the system is so broken, and that's not going to help at all," said Kathy Escamilla, a University of Colorado education professor. "Those are little games to prevent showing what's going on."

Under the law signed by Bush in 2002, all public school students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014, although only children above second grade are required to be tested.

Schools receiving federal poverty aid also must demonstrate annually that students in all racial categories are progressing or risk penalties that include extending the school year, changing curriculum or firing administrators and teachers.

The law requires public schools to test more than 25 million students periodically in reading and math. No scores can be excluded from a school's overall measure.

But the schools also must report scores by categories, such as race, poverty, migrant status, English proficiency and special education. Failure in any category means the whole school fails.

States are helping schools get around that second requirement by using a loophole in the law that allows them to ignore scores of racial groups that are too small to be statistically significant.

Suppose, for example, that a school has 2,000 white students and nine Hispanics. In nearly every state, the Hispanic scores wouldn't be counted because there aren't enough to provide meaningful information and because officials want to protect students' privacy.

State educators decide when a group is too small to count. And they've been asking the government for exemptions to exclude larger numbers of students in racial categories. Nearly two dozen states have successfully petitioned the government for such changes in the past two years. As a result, schools can now ignore racial breakdowns even when they have 30, 40 or even 50 students of a given race in the testing population.

Students must be tested annually in grades 3 through 8 and at least once in high school, usually in 10th grade. This is the first school year that students in all those grades must be tested, though schools have been reporting scores by race for the tests they have been administering since the law was approved.

To calculate a nationwide estimate, the AP analyzed the 2003-04 enrollment figures the government collected — the latest on record — and applied the current racial category exemptions the states use.

Overall, the AP found that about 1.9 million students — or about 1 in every 14 test scores — aren't being counted under the law's racial categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores excluded as whites, the analysis showed.

Less than 2 percent of white children's scores aren't being counted as a separate category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10 percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores and nearly half of American Indian scores aren't broken out, AP found.

Bush's home state of Texas — once cited as a model for the federal law — excludes scores for two entire groups. No test scores from Texas' 65,000 Asian students or from several thousand American Indian students are broken out by race. The same is true in Arkansas.

Students whose tests aren't being counted in required categories also include Hispanics in California who don't speak English well, blacks in the Chicago suburbs, American Indians in the Northwest and special education students in Virginia.

State educators defend the exemptions, saying minority students' performance is still being included in their schools' overall statistics even when they aren't being counted in racial categories. Excluded minority students' scores may be counted at the district or state level.

Spellings said she believes educators are making a good-faith effort. "Are there people out there who will find ways to game the system?" she asked. "Of course. But on the whole ... I fully believe in my heart, mind and soul that educators are people of good will who care about kids and want them to find opportunity in schools."

Bush has hailed the separate accounting of minority students as a vital feature of the law. "It's really essential we do that. It's really important," Bush said in a May 2004 speech. "If you don't do that, you're likely to leave people behind. And that's not right."

Nonetheless, Bush's Education Department continues to give widely varying exemptions to states:

_Oklahoma lets schools exclude the test scores from any racial category with 52 or fewer members in the testing population, one of the largest across-the-board exemptions. That means 1 in 5 children in the state don't have scores broken out by race.

_Maryland, which tests about 150,000 students more than Oklahoma, has an exempt group size of just five. That means fewer than 1 in 100 don't have scores counted.

_Washington state has made 18 changes to its testing plan, according to a February report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. Vermont has made none. On average, states have made eight changes at either the state or federal level to their plans in the past five years, usually changing the size or accountability of subgroups whose scores were supposed to be counted.

Toia Jones, a black teacher whose daughters attend school in a mostly white Chicago suburb, said the loophole is enabling states and schools to avoid taking concrete measures to eliminate an "achievement gap" between white and minority students.

"With this loophole, it's almost like giving someone a trick bag to get out of a hole," she said. "Now people, instead of figuring out how do we really solve it, some districts, in order to save face or in order to not be faced with the sanctions, they're doing what they can to manipulate the data."

Some students feel left behind, too.

"It's terrible," said Michael Oshinaya, a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City who was among a group of black students whose scores weren't broken out as a racial category. "We're part of America. We make up America, too. We should be counted as part of America."

Spellings' department is caught between two forces. Schools and states are eager to avoid the stigma of failure under the law, especially as the 2014 deadline draws closer. But Congress has shown little political will to modify the law to address their concerns. That leaves the racial category exemptions as a stopgap solution.

"She's inherited a disaster," said David Shreve, an education policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The 'Let's Make a Deal' policy is to save the law from fundamental changes, with Margaret Spellings as Monty Hall."

The solution may be to set a single federal standard for when minority students' scores don't have to be counted separately, said Ross Wiener, policy director for the Washington-based Education Trust.

While the exemptions were created for good reasons, there's little doubt now that group sizes have become political, said Wiener, whose group supports the law.

"They're asking the question, not how do we generate statistically reliable results, but how do we generate politically palatable results," he said.

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Omaha Schools Split Along Race Lines

By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 13, 10:44 PM ET

LINCOLN, Neb. - In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the Legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts — one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.
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Supporters said the plan would give minorities control over their own school board and ensure that their children are not shortchanged in favor of white youngsters.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed the measure into law.

Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne decried the bill, saying, "We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back."

"History will not, and should not, judge us kindly," said Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.

Attorney General Jon Bruning sent a letter to one of the measure's opponents saying that the bill could be in violation of the Constitution's equal-protection clause and that lawsuits almost certainly will be filed.

But its backers said that at the very least, its passage will force policymakers to negotiate seriously about the future of schools in the Omaha area.

The breakup would not occur until July 2008, leaving time for lawmakers to come up with another idea.

"There is no intent to create segregation," said Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, the Legislature's only black senator and a longtime critic of the school system.

He argued that the district is already segregated, because it no longer buses students for integration and instead requires them to attend their neighborhood school.

Chambers said the schools attended largely by minorities lack the resources and quality teachers provided others in the district. He said the black students he represents in north Omaha would receive a better education if they had more control over their district.

Coming from Chambers, the argument was especially persuasive to the rest of the Legislature, which voted three times this week in favor of the bill before it won final passage on the last day of the session.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent John Mackiel said the law is unconstitutional and will not stand.

"There simply has never been an anti-city school victory anywhere in this nation," Mackiel said. "This law will be no exception."

The 45,000-student Omaha school system is 46 percent white, 31 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian or American Indian.

Boundaries for the newly created districts would be drawn using current high school attendance areas. That would result in four possible scenarios; in every scenario, two districts would end up with a majority of students who are racial minorities.

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Originally posted by SaintAndeol:
and the teachers i talked to didn't have any nice things to say about NCLB. Essentially they described it as a program designed to output results that made the progress seem better than it actually was.

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Originally posted by rue:
Well, I see I killed another thread. My job here is done, then.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
So . . .thoughts from anyone? The answer seems obvious to me, but it's also probably too easy/too hard depending on who you talk to.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I think the problem that many educators have with NCLB may have more to do with the accountability that is being forced upon them then any real issue.

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NCLB is not an unfunded mandate. According to a CBO report and a GAO review, NCLB is neither unfunded nor a mandate. It is voluntary and it is very funded. In fact, a 40% increase in education funding came with NCLB,

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but it ties education funding, at least in part, to results, which means that educators must now produce some kind of result if they are to get full funding. And not to put too fine a point on it, but this sounds like something that will piss people off, if they are used to getting money with no particular requirement attacked to it.

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I think that is absolutely what the public education system in the US has been lacking, and I feel more comfortable about putting my tax dollars into education knowing that there is some kind of accountability to how it is being used, and it is not just being sucked up by a huge education bureaucracy with no particular benefit to education.

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Originally posted by SevenPercent:
I spend hours upon hours in meetings every month with people trying to figure out how to make the school system operate better. NCLB made it worse, since now the admin is paranoid that we're going to lose funding (and I'm in a great school district).

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Welcome to the real world.

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I spend much of my time fretting over funding or fretting over what people above me are fretting over funding. I supposed I could throw a fit because people aren’t just giving me money for my job independent of results, or I could work hard to make sure that my projects stays on top and produces good results so that people will be inclined to keep me funded.

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I tend towards the latter, which may be why my project was rated highest of all projects in its category at the last review panel, and as a result the Army promised us no more funding cuts. See how that works?

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

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Originally posted by SevenPercent:
I spend hours upon hours in meetings every month with people trying to figure out how to make the school system operate better. NCLB made it worse, since now the admin is paranoid that we're going to lose funding (and I'm in a great school district).

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Welcome to the real world. I spend much of my time fretting over funding or fretting over what people above me are fretting over funding. I supposed I could throw a fit because people aren’t just giving me money for my job independent of results, or I could work hard to make sure that my projects stays on top and produces good results so that people will be inclined to keep me funded. I tend towards the latter, which may be why my project was rated highest of all projects in its category at the last review panel, and as a result the Army promised us no more funding cuts. See how that works?

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Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Originally posted by SevenPercent:
No one's throwing a fit because we're not getting money we didn't earn. It's not like teachers are asking for the money for themselves, independent of results, you ass.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
It's not completely the fault of the educator. Sure, some don't try that hard, but most do. A large percentage of the problem is kids that don't want to learn and kids that have parents that don't care.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Given your angry attitude and boorish language, I have little confidence in that.

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And buying books and hiring new teachers is all well and good, but the truth is that none of that matters if our students aren’t learning, and it doesn’t seem like they are, in spite of the money that is being spent.

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Your response is to throw fit and call me an ass, which affirms my position. Is it really worth continuing this discussion with you?

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Originally posted by Rhyianan:
Finn, being a student, I can tell you no child left behind is horrible. The students that don't care are being catered to, because they are the ones that can't pass the tests. This means that the students that want to learn can't because the teachers have to try to force the students that don't want to learn to learn the material.

As it has been said before, this is just dumbing down the population more, when we're already too ignorant as it is.

My high school was literally falling down around us. Sinks were falling off the walls in the bathrooms, termites were eating away at the band and choir room floors, and in some places, the snow was actually coming inside. However, because the community didn't want to pay for a new building, we didn't have enough money to do both the new program and the repairs that would make the learning environment better. And you're saying that since not 100% of the students can pass a test in that situation, that the school district should get even less money???

Do you want this country to be full of idiots?

Oh yeah....it's too late.

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Originally posted by jmb9039:
Right now NCLB takes money away from schools that fail to perform (a ridiculous idea) rather than give them resources to help them succeed -- punishment without assistance.

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Originally posted by jmb9039:
Also, education (as anyone in academia knows) is about discovery, learning, critical thinking, investment in knowledge. Standardized tests (and especially the weight put on them) are actually hurting schools. Students don't learn critical thinking skills or discovery or proactive learning - instead they learn to memorize and regurgitate information. It is very sad.

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Originally posted by Rhyianan:
Finn, being a student, I can tell you no child left behind is horrible. The students that don't care are being catered to, because they are the ones that can't pass the tests. This means that the students that want to learn can't because the teachers have to try to force the students that don't want to learn to learn the material.

As it has been said before, this is just dumbing down the population more, when we're already too ignorant as it is.

My high school was literally falling down around us. Sinks were falling off the walls in the bathrooms, termites were eating away at the band and choir room floors, and in some places, the snow was actually coming inside. However, because the community didn't want to pay for a new building, we didn't have enough money to do both the new program and the repairs that would make the learning environment better. And you're saying that since not 100% of the students can pass a test in that situation, that the school district should get even less money???

Do you want this country to be full of idiots?

Oh yeah....it's too late.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
you have the option to go to another school in your school district that is not categorized as “needing improvement"

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Originally posted by SaintAndeol:
The problem is, pop "culture" is becoming a vacuum of any actual culture, instead degrading itself to blatant egoism and materialism. Worship of vacuous celebrities is at an all time high. It's getting to where if I see a hot girl in public, wearing some insanely short shorts and a tight shirt, I can't tell if she's 14 or 20. And if these kids don't idolize some stupid girl dressing like a whore, they idolize some amoral gangsta who only cares about making as much money as he can.

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On the whole, I don’t think standardized tests are the best way to learn or to assess education, but this is nonsense argument, because prior to NCLB standardized test requirements public schools in the US weren’t performing very well to begin with. So like the “new books” argument, this doesn’t seem to be the bottleneck either. It seems to me that public schools had their opportunity to enact the unrestricted discovery method and it didn’t work; now I think we need to try something else.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
The kids in Omaha will no longer have this option if the legislation isn't challenged because each school has been turned into its own school district instead of remaining part of the Omaha school district.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
As for the state giving money to the schools, state governments don't like to give very much because the residents don't want to give money. However, in our society that is obsessed with athletes and celebrities, people are willing to raise sales tax to pay for a new football stadium. But when asked if they wanted excess money to go to social programs (from the tax increase they just voted Yes for), everyone said no. So the Green Bay Packers got a new stadium at the expense of shoppers/taxpayers and the mentally ill homeless in Green Bay have to rely on free samples from pharmaceutical companies for their medication.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
Maybe people will change their minds once they realize that 30% of students are going to drop out without graduating, males are falling way behind females in class, and the U.S. is falling behind in the worldwide arena.

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Originally posted by jya:
Now tell me again Finn, how NCLB is working. How can you say that when my daughter, who has been independently evaluated be her pediatrician, a psychologist, and her school, and been found to have way above average intellect, is being told she is in danger of being "left behind"?

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I don’t know. Maybe your grandmother could shed some light on that. As critics of NCLB have been pointing out over and over, include you, no single system is going to work for everyone. The truth will be in an aggregate assessment. Does NCLB improve, in general, the quality of education in public schools over time? I don’t know if that is true, and I think it is too early to tell, but according to the Department of Education NCLB is working. That’s all I can tell you.

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but according to the Department of Education NCLB is working.

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...nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal
Alrighty. I can only assume that Omaha has a good reason for doing this.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal
according to the Department of Education NCLB is working

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal
Maybe. But people have been saying that for years; at least as long as I’ve been alive

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Originally posted by jya:
How amusing of you to imply my 7-year old daughter is stupid. You must have been so proud when you thought that up. Now I know what the problem is, you must be a product of NCLB yourself, seeing as how you have serious problems with reading comprehension. Obviously you missed the part where I said my daughter has above average intelligence, as well as the part where I said her reading is not the problem, only how fasts she reads.

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
How long have you been alive? Out of curiousity, how long have you been away from the public school system?

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Originally posted by Sassalicious:
And since NCLB seems to be based on a test, it seems inherently wrong. There are better ways to judge a school's success and a person's educational development.

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Originally posted by jmb9039:
There is no easy fix to the problem, but the first steps are to get rid of these tests and get politicians out of the mix.

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