Look for whole storybehind test data forNo Child Left BehindThe intent of George W’s No Child Left Behind Act (other than to appear education-friendly) is good: to ensure all children have access to quality education.But the testing process to make sure districts are making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the Report Card may jeopardize all the law’s best intentions.Districts earning five stars on the Report Card are recognized in national press releases and qualify for additional funding.Those who don’t make the grade are also published and threatened with funding cuts and worse if they fail to meet AYP.Scores are presented to the public with little explanation about their implications.In the first round of testing, many local schools met AYP with five-star ratings. Luverne School District, however, met AYP with a humble three stars, raising eyebrows among locals who read the report.Without diminishing the achievements of our neighboring five-star districts, what those schools don’t have that Luverne does have is a large and growing special needs student population.Success story behind the failing gradeWhile many schools sat have offered the bare minimum to meet state and federal special education mandates, Luverne, rose to the challenge and now has a superior curriculum to rival most schools in the state.With this reputation — largely due to referrals from South Dakota children’s hospitals — special needs students are open-enrolling to Luverne, and families with special needs children are moving here to benefit from the curriculum.As Luverne’s overall student population is declining, its numbers of special needs students are increasing. At last count, 12 to 13 percent of the Luverne’s students have special education needs.Why is all this important to note? Because it’s the success story behind Luverne’s lowly three-star label.The No Child Left Behind Act requires districts to test at least 95 percent of its students. Luverne did that and lost a couple stars as a direct result of including special needs students in the test.Here’s where the legislation could use a little fine tuning.To penalize districts like Luverne’s for building a strong special needs curriculum defeats the intent of the law. The star rating system becomes a useless tool for measuring quality education.As the next Report Card is published, I’d offer a gentle reminder that reporting such data without interpretation makes it a dangerous yardstick for measuring and comparing quality education among districts.In the rush to Leave No Child Left Behind, I would hope that we don’t lose sight of each district’s individual efforts to provide quality education to its all children — despite what the Report Card might be saying.Show me the moneyIf George W. is really interested in leaving no child behind, I’d suggest he find a way to fund some of the federal special education mandates that local districts have been shouldering for nearly30 years.When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, it promised to fund 40 percent of those mandates. It currently funds about 14 percent.If Luverne received that promised 40 percent, the district would have roughly $234,000 more in revenues each year.Just think what that kind of funding could do to ensure No Child Is Left Behind.
