EDUCATION Panel criticizes testing mandate

The proficiency test playing field is not level, educators complain.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The federal No Child Left Behind law sets unfair and unrealistic expectations, in the opinion of panelists at a forum Monday evening.
"You don't do it in 12 years. It takes a generation," James Hall, South Range schools superintendent, said of the law's goal of achieving proficiency for all students within 12 years.
Hall was one of five panelists at the discussion, which was part of the Universal Cafe Arts and Lecture Series at First Unitarian Church.
The law, which President Bush signed on Jan. 8, 2002, requires annual academic achievement testing of children in grades three through eight in reading and math beginning in the 2005-06 school year, with a science test to be added by the 2007-08 school year.
The law also requires availability of other public school alternatives where schools don't show adequate yearly progress. It also demands corrective action in underperforming schools, including tutoring, after-school and summer classes, and in extreme cases, replacement of some staff and installation of a new curriculum.
Criticized funding
Hall, whose district has achieved the state's rating of academic excellence six years in a row, said the federal law may be "laudable in its goals," but is inadequately funded. He said he endorses its requirements for improving teacher education, accountability in education and documenting student progress.
He and other panelists said the law underestimates the impact of poverty on academic achievement test performance. "How then can you say to children who have been disenfranchised in so many ways, 'You have to do the same kind of work as the children who have been pretty richly gifted in the card game of life?,'" Hall said.
"Urban students and rural students, for the most part, do not do as well as the students out in your suburbs," on academic proficiency tests for economic reasons, said Henrietta Williams, principal of The Rayen School on the city's North Side.
She complained that educators are being required to meet rising academic performance standards while schools are inadequately funded and the teaching staff is being reduced.
Noted progress
Williams noted that progress is being made in the Youngstown City School District, which has improved recently from academic emergency to academic watch status on the state's report card. This past school year, for the first time, every Rayen School senior required to pass the proficiency test for graduation did so, she said.
"All students don't have the same advantages," said Maggie Hagan, a recently retired middle-school language arts teacher in the Warren city schools. Lawmakers haven't "experienced the poverty, anger and violence that our children come to our doors with," she said, referring to problems plaguing urban schoolchildren.
The federal law "has taken away the heart and soul of education," she said. She complained that lawmakers, who have mandated proficiency testing requirements, have been listening to corporate executives' demands for a better educated workforce, but not to educators.
Kathy Shook, a doctoral candidate in educational administration and adjunct education faculty member at Youngstown State University, said NCLB's use of a single high-stakes annual test to rate schools' performance is unreasonable and unfair. She advocated letting school districts publish results of a variety of academic achievement tests.
A standard academic proficiency test "doesn't measure what a kid knows. It measures what they bring to school," Randy Hoover, a YSU education professor, said of the test NCLB would use. The test won't assess intelligence, but will measure life experiences, vocabulary and language skills, which are closely linked to socio-economic status, he said.