Schools face day of reckoning as No Child deadlines near

Schools face day of reckoning as No Child deadlines near

When it comes to demanding quantifiable success from public school students and accountability from teachers and administrators, Ohio just can’t seem to get it right.

A report by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy released this week shows that Ohio is among a group of states that chose to go easy on themselves in the earlier years of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

All the states knew that their students had to be able to pass standard tests by the 2013-14 school year. About half the states set steady annual goals for increasing the passage rates of their students. The other half set less stringent demands in the early years of compliance knowing that they would have to show even greater progress as the deadline came near.

Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the latter group ,and over the next five years, they are going to have to make up for lost time.

And, as the deadline approaches, Ohio and its school districts will find it more expensive to do the remedial work that is necessary to get their students to pass the tests.

The state is not unlike a mortgage holder who opted for a variable rate mortgage. It looked like a good deal at the beginning, but now the interest rates are rising.

The consequences for failing to reach benchmarks will become more severe, with some teachers and administrators who have not been able to reach the established goals in danger of losing their jobs.

Of course, the easiest thing for failing states to do will be to lobby Congress for a change in the law. Expect that to happen, and, unfortunately, they may be successful.

Accountability is a plus

No Child Left Behind was not a perfect plan, and the constant complaint was that it was a largely unfunded mandate on the states. But accountability is a good thing, and while no test is perfect, there is no way to hold school districts to account for failure without testing.

The states are split almost equally by number in those that opted for steady performance goals and those that gambled on back-loaded goals. But the latter group contains most of the states with larger congressional delegations — California, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York and Texas are among the heavy hitters in the other group. Florida pursued a blended program.

Look for states in danger of failing to lobby vociferously for changes in No Child Left Behind. States that took the harder road might be inclined to see No Child Left Behind through, but partisan politics will also be a factor. Democrats are generally less enamored of standardized tests than Republicans.

It would be better if Congress took a bipartisan approach and told all the states that they will be held to meeting the 2013-14 goals.

We are reminded of an earlier effort in Ohio to demand accountability. It was called the fourth-grade guarantee. Every school district in the state knew in advance that the kindergarten pupils they enrolled in 1997 would be required to read at a fourth-grade level five years later or they would be held back a grade. As the deadline approached and it became obvious that tens of thousands of students could not read at grade level and would be held back, the General Assembly folded.

It amended the law to eliminate the guarantee and instituted new testing protocols.

Congress shouldn’t retreat. The goals were established. Every school board and educator in the land knew what was at stake.