Experts: School Act May Hurt Students

North Carolina is on target to meet the Jan. 29 deadline for submitting new federally mandated education targets, but many experts say the changes will affect education in the state adversely.

Officials say the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, signed by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, will cause conflict by overriding many existing state policies.

The act requires a yearly incremental improvement in math, English and science beginning in fall 2002. Thirteen ethnic, socio-economic and physical categories will replace single-school results when evaluating a school's effectiveness.

If one group of students fails to meet state performance targets, the school could be labeled as underperforming. Two consecutive years of underperformance would cause students to be eligible to transfer schools. Consistently underperforming schools could be closed or taken over by the state, and their teachers could be replaced.

State education officials -- including Jane Worsham, executive director of the N.C. State Board of Education -- fear the transfer clause in the act might lead to school overcrowding.

"Rural areas with only one high school will not have another school for students to transfer to," Worsham said.

"Urban-area schools will have to take students applying for a transfer from an underperforming school even if it has already reached its class limit."

But Kimberly Tulp, spokeswoman for the Education Leaders Council, said the specific categories will aid student progress by putting individuals, not entire schools, under the microscope.

"There are pockets of students who are not making adequate yearly progress but are hiding behind the law of averages."

However, UNC education Professor Fenwick English said the act would hurt public instruction in North Carolina. "Teachers will teach toward the tests, and this will have a detrimental effect on the overall curriculum."

English added that the new annual tests would harm students already at a socio-economic disadvantage. "The instruments used are culturally biased. The best predictor of a test score is socio-economics, not schooling," he said.

English said the act fails to balance state control of public education with federal standards. States set their own targets, so figures are not nationally comparable, he said. "I could look great in Alabama but not so good in New York."

But Brian Jones, ELC vice president of communications and policy, said that the act calls for national testing every other year and that it will enable state comparison and target refining.

Worsham said that finance is a major concern when setting the targets and that other school programs could be cut to implement testing.

"There have been increases of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding, but the general consensus is that this will not nearly be enough to implement the program."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.