Mixed local reaction to Obama education changes

A proposed revision of the federal government's flagship effort to improve schools would ease the burden most of them face in trying to pass annual benchmark tests, compared with the current No Child Left Behind law.

But the Obama administration's plan would impose stiff sanctions on a relatively small number of persistently low-achieving schools. Such schools, including some in Philadelphia, would be restructured.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act overhaul "blueprint," released earlier this month, has yet to be introduced as legislation; many details have not been completed.

No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, has become a fixture in the education landscape. It requires students to take annual proficiency tests. Schools face sanctions if all students or those in certain categories - learning disabled, minorities, English Language Learners, or economically disadvantaged - don't do well.

Schools rated as "failing" have to allow students to transfer, must use some federal funding for tutoring, and will get increased state oversight.

All children are supposed to meet state standards by 2014, a goal widely seen as unrealistic. About a quarter of Pennsylvania's 3,115 tested schools did not meet reading and math targets last year. In New Jersey, 35 percent of 2,222 schools did not make the grade.

The proposed legislation would keep annual state testing in third through eighth grades and again in 11th grade. But it would shift the focus of how to measure a school's academic improvement from scoring well on those tests to ensuring students achieve academic goals by the time they graduate.

Under No Child Left Behind, some schools with otherwise strong academic ratings receive failing grades on the state tests because their scores are brought down by relatively minor deficiencies. Districts in this group include Wallingford-Swarthmore, North Penn, Pennsbury, and Kennett Consolidated. Obama's proposal would give schools like those more flexibility in meeting goals, but exactly how has not been spelled out.

"We want to stop mislabeling thousands of schools as failures," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last week. "Instead, we want to challenge them to close achievement gaps with targeted strategies designed by teachers and principals together."

That makes sense to Victoria Gehrt, an assistant superintendent in the Kennett district. "Nobody likes having a label placed on them," she said. The proposed changes, she said, "would recognize districts like ours that are high-achieving, that have challenges, but are embracing them and making progress."

The great majority of schools in Pennsylvania and New Jersey fall into a middle category: ones that score lower on state tests, but come close to or meet standards.

Under the proposed changes, they would also get more flexibility, though they would have to continue to show gains. About 120 of 267 Philadelphia schools met state test standards in 2009. In its Pennsylvania suburbs, all but 68 of 494 schools met 2009 state benchmarks.

Schools with test scores in the lowest 5 percent statewide would face the biggest impact under Obama's plan. That group would have to adopt one of four restructuring plans that could lead to replacing principals, dismissing half the teachers, converting to a charter school, bringing in outside management, or closing the school.

The state has identified 76 low-achieving Philadelphia schools as restructuring candidates, though not all are in the bottom 5 percent. In the city's Pennsylvania suburbs, 11 schools are restructuring targets; New Jersey named 29 schools for restructuring, including eight in Camden.

Reaction to the proposal is mixed.

Michael Race, of the Pennsylvania Education Department, said the state has "worked toward putting in place many of the same principles the Obama administration has outlined."

Willa Spicer, a New Jersey deputy education commissioner, said of Obama's blueprint: "I think it is an extraordinary document. . . . It is far broader than anything we've seen before." New Jersey has raised achievement thresholds on state tests to make sure students are academically prepared when they leave school, she said.

But James Testerman, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, slammed the proposal, saying it still relied heavily on testing.

He said the plan didn't factor in many influences on student achievement that were "out of control of the educator - students growing up in poverty, hungry, without health care, in unsafe conditions, and in schools with a lack of resources for building a safe and nurturing educational environment."

Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said she liked what she has heard. "Secretary Duncan was very open to input from people like me and other superintendents," she said.

Joseph Bruni, the superintendent of Delaware County's struggling William Penn School District, which would likely see some schools restructured if the proposal became law, said, "Targeting teachers and principals in low-achieving schools troubles me. We shouldn't write them off because children are not performing at the same level as those in more prosperous districts."