Testing and Assessment Archive

For our September “What is Ready?” cover package, the editors of ASBJ interviewed educators, scholars, and researchers about the topic of student readiness for the 21st century. Over the coming weeks, we will post many of those interviews on asbj.com in our “online only” section.

Today, we kick off the series with answers to our questions from Richard Rothstein, the former New York Times education columnist and author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap. As you might expect from Rothstein, who has contributed a number of articles to our magazine, his answers are provocative and thought-provoking.

Here is an excerpt:

Editors: What is "ready"? What specific skills should students have when they leave high school to enter higher education or the workforce?

Rothstein: This is the wrong -- or at least too narrow -- question. Contemporary education policy places too much emphasis on preparation for higher education or the workforce. Our public education system, historically and today, exists for more than this. Also of great importance is preparation for citizenship, for community responsibility, for good health (physical and emotional), and for adult leisure which benefits from an appreciation of the arts and literature.

For example, for citizenship, what kinds of conflict resolution skills do students have? Do they accept a responsibility to support or dissent from public policies, when appropriate? Can they combine advocacy with respect for differences? For physical health, are they in the habits of regular exercise and good nutrition; do they engage in responsible and safe sexual practices?

A colleague, Rebecca Jacobsen, and I wrote about these multiple goals in the October 2006 issue of the American School Board Journal.http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2006/October/WhatBoardsWantfromSchoolsDoc621.aspx In that article, we described a survey we conducted of a representative sample of NSBA members, confirming that school board members support a broader mission for public education than preparation for higher education or the workforce alone.

For more, go to our “Online Only” section and click on Q&A: Richard Rothstein.

Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief

So author Jonathan Kozol may be known to eat at grandmothers’ homes, but for now he won’t be eating very much. He’s been on a “partial fast” (otherwise known as a diet?) for more than two months now to protest the No Child Left Behind Act’s detrimental effect on urban schools.

In his blog on the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com), Kozol says the law is undermining impoverished students and their teachers by using military-like penalties to try to force schools to improve, and those actions are siphoning off creativity and the joys of school.

“The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic ‘teaching to the test’ it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools,” Kozol writes.

The House of Representatives held a committee hearing yesterday on its reauthorization proposed by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). That plan, which has been circulated as a draft, would give schools more flexibility in meeting NCLB’s goals but also add more procedural requirements.

Kozol says his fasting consists of consuming only small amounts of mostly liquid foods, except when he has stomach pains, in which his doctor has ordered other forms of nourishment to avoid heart damage. He doesn’t say what it will take to make him stop, but we’re hoping he’ll find some form of relief soon.

“Twenty-nine pounds lighter than I was when I began, I've been dreaming about big delicious dinners,” he writes.

Joetta Sack-Min, associate editor

Leave it to the media to spoil any party; and I must admit, at Tuesday’s presentation of the fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP results in math and reading, I did my small part.

I’m sure you know the news by now: Average reading scores were up for all students, as were the scores of African Americans and Hispanics (although racial and ethic gaps showed little change). And the math increases were even bigger.

So, naturally, the second question from the media was:

“What’s wrong with Oklahoma?”

Yeah, what is wrong with Oklahoma, anyway? I’m sure that was foremost in your mind. (The state posted gains in math, but was down in reading from the 1990s.)

Next question? More nattering negativism: “Is the three-to-five-year estimate for closing the racial achievement gap [the estimate from Sacramento Superintendent David W. Gordon] overly optimistic?”

No, Gordon said.

And finally, from this reporter: “To what extent did NCLB have anything whatsoever to do with these increases?” (I didn’t mean to put such a pejorative spin on it, but what can I do? I’m in the media.)

“I don’t know how you would sort out the impact of one from another [state reforms from NCLB],” said Darvin M. Winick, chair of the National Assessment Governing Board. “But I think that the focus on data that NCLB encourages is a very positive impact.”

That was it: four questions. And, as the meeting was breaking up, I overheard someone remark that the media don’t know what to ask when the news is good. Oh, how the truth hurts!

But, seriously, when it comes to NCLB, I really do have an open mind. So open, in fact, that I don’t know what to think. Dedicated policy analysts from the Education Trust say the law is tantamount to educational civil rights for poor and minority children. On the other side, renowned author Jonathan Kozol is weeks into a partial hunger strike to protest the law’s impact on …. poor and minority children.

Is it a great law, a flawed bill that just needs tweaking, or a drill-and-kill abomination? I honestly don’t know. But as the law’s reauthorization makes its way through Congress this fall, I promise to keep asking those downbeat questions.

I’m in the media. It’s what we do.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Call me a nerd if you want to, but I really like this book. It’s called The New Meaning of Educational Change, and it’s not exactly beach reading.

I’ll admit I was skeptical -- both (generally) of my upcoming assignment to write about change, and (specifically) of this 338-page tome by Michael Fullan, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, which I found using the time-honored research method of typing “educational change” in Google and seeing what came up.

It turns out this is the fourth (!) edition of this same book, hence “new” in the title. It seems the professor has been writing about this subject for some 25 years. Is there really that much to say about change? I thought. Can’t you -- in the immortal words of the philosopher Nike -- “Just do it?”

I was wrong. Far from being irrelevant and “academic” -- in the worst sense of the word -- the book goes to the heart of why schools and school districts have such a hard time with what Fullan calls “innovativeness.”

“We vastly underestimate both what change is … and what factors and processes account for it ...,” Fullan writes early on, and then proceeds to explain why.

All real change, whether voluntary (your new curriculum, perhaps) or involuntary (NCLB), involves what one researcher calls “loss, anxiety, and struggle.” And, thus, ambivalence. The only way change can take hold, Fullan says, is if there is “shared meaning” among all parties involved. In other words, those at all levels, from conception through implementation, must know what problem the proposed change is expected to address, how it plans to do this, how progress will be measured, etc.

Examples abound. For instance, I thought of shared meaning -- or, more precisely, the apparent lack of it -- in relation to NCLB and its provisions for Adequate Yearly Progress. It’s a good bet that the people who thought up AYP did not plan on urban schools trying to achieve it by narrowing their curriculum, cutting out arts and science, and drilling their students relentlessly. But that is what some educators have done. Why? I suspect it’s because they have perceived this change as threatening on a number of levels. The “meaning” for them is much different than it is for the politicians and policymakers.

As Fullan puts it, “meaning” must be fostered in relation to both the “what” and the “how” of change.

“It is possible to be crystal clear about what one wants and totally inept at achieving it,” Fullan writes. “Or to be skilled at managing change but empty-headed about which changes are most needed. To make matters more difficult, we often do not know what we want, or do not know the actual consequences of a direction until we get there.”

Beach reading? Hardly. But a good primer on the kind of groundwork it will take to change America’s schools.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Oh, the unintended consequences of being assigned Mutiny on the Bounty as eighth-grade summer reading. I know because I was so assigned. My parents knew because of the salty effect it had on my language.

I remember one morning at breakfast:

Mom: What will you have for breakfast, Larry?

Larry: “By God, I’ll have pancakes!”

Mom: “O … K. And what would you like with that?”

Larry. “Orange juice…… By God!

Mom: I think we need to talk about your language.”

Yes, that happened (more or less as stated). But, joking aside, reading the Nordhoff and Hall novel of adventure on the South Seas -- its tale of loyalty and betrayal, and of the indistinct line between good and evil -- was incredibly enriching. So was reading the other novels I was assigned in the upper elementary and middle grades: Old Yeller, The Yearling, The Call of the Wild, A Member of the Wedding. I only vaguely remember the stories, some of which I might never have read if not introduced to them in school. What I do recall is the effect they had on me, how they helped me visualize a boundless world outside myself.

I thought about this yesterday while reading a letter from a Maryland woman in the New York Times. She was responding to an article about a National Endowment of the Arts report on the endangered status of reading for fun. (“Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/arts/19nea.html?ref=opinion). And she praised, albeit ironically, the Times headline for making the connection between test scores and reading, “because only the evidence of lower test scores will move the myopic beast loosed by No Child Left Behind to change its course.”

Then, the kicker. “My son attends arguably the best public middle-school program in Baltimore,” the letter writer, Christina Myers, said, “and the language arts teachers there have been told not to teach novels until the spring, after the state testing is over.

“The absurdity might almost make me laugh, if it weren’t so horrifying in its implications.”

I would have used the word “sad” -- how sad that these children, and so many others like them, are being denied the kind of transformative experiences I remember from my youth.

Please, don’t let this happen in your schools.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Who is Mike Rose, and why is he so darned reasonable?

At a time when the Democratic presidential candidates are busy shredding each another in Iowa, and pundits on the Left and Right are deeming each other mortal threats to the America; when Ann Coulter is declaring a 10th Crusade against Islam, and a responder to ASBJ’s Your Turn poll ignores the month’s question to scrawl: “Impeach Cheney, then Bush!” … Amid all this, some UCLA education professor has the temerity to take on the most controversial K-12 issue of our time and come up with a most thoughtful, clear-headed, and non-biased analysis.

Just who does he think he is?

In his recent Education Week commentary, “Seek a ‘Fuller Language of Schooling’’ (www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/07/11rose.h27.html), Rose explores the kind of education NCLB, and its testing regimen, fosters and asks a basic, philosophical question: “What kind of education befits a democratic society?”

It is undeniable that the federal law “shines a bright light on those underserved populations of students who get lost in averaged measures of performance,” Rose writes. The assumption that all children can learn, that public institutions such as schools have a responsibility to their citizenry, that schools can be improved -- these are the democratic promises of NCLB.

“What is worth exploring, though, is the degree to which these tenets are invested in an accountability mechanism that might restrict their full realization,” Rose writes. He then discusses the advantages and disadvantages of standardized tests and their impact on teaching, particularly in school serving disadvantaged children.

Clearly, “NCLB has jolted some low-performing schools to evaluate and redirect their inadequate curriculum,” he writes. The question is: Have they done this “through a strictly functional and unimaginative curriculum (which, admittedly, might be better than what came before) or through a rich course of study that, as a byproduct, affects test scores?”

Rose, of course, argues for the latter and says “there are signs that we as a country are beginning to seek some fuller language of schooling” that goes beyond “scores, rankings, and an elaborate technology of calibration and compliance.”

“The No Child Left Behind Act will undoubtedly be reauthorized,” Rose concludes. “But my hope is that as we debate its merits and flaws, we will begin to develop more fitting ways to talk about children and the schools that shape their lives.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

As we celebrate or bemoan the sixth anniversary of No Child Left Behind, the obsession with testing and data -- and what we do with those numbers -- is now the pervasive dilemma for just about everyone in the education policy field.

From a journalist’s perspective, the vast array of numbers coming from NCLB requirements have given us many stories and many more story ideas. But what I’ve found is that for all the slicing and dicing, statistics and test scores never tell a complete story about a school. There’s always a story behind the data -- and occasionally that might be a totally different picture than expected.

Perhaps a school with abysmal test scores is tackling gang violence and helping students stay in school. Another might have promising strategies for teaching migrant students. Or a school making Adequate Yearly Progress may be ignoring its gifted and talented programs.

The only way to find out is to visit schools, talk to people there (everyone from the superintendent to paraprofessionals), spend time in the community, consult with researchers and policy wonks, and look at data. I once worked on a report with an editor who started by pulling together experts to discuss current research, data, and trends for a particular subgroup but also sent several of us on site visits to document real-life examples. The end product was a tapestry that we felt gave readers a rich understanding of all the issues and the factors that brought about the data. It made the national news and won praise from the education community, as well as a couple journalism awards.

I later worked with a group whose strategy was to use independent researchers to gather all the test scores and reports they could find, and then write a report from their notes. The project team never set foot in a school or talked to any administrators or teachers, and the editor’s mantra was, “Let the data tell the story!” Not surprisingly, that report ended up getting lampooned by the local press, and I’ll bet most of the copies ended up in recycling bins.

People, not statistics, are what make public education. In this new year, which may or may not see an NCLB reauthorization, our responsibility will be finding and bringing to light the stories behind the statistics.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

“I’d scrap it!”

I could have sworn I heard (and saw) Hillary Clinton say those words on TV, counterintuitive though it may sound. Why, I asked, would the Democratic front runner go out on a limb and trash NCLB when she could get by with something bland like: “It should be reformed?”

So I got on Nexis and typed something like: “Hillary and Child and Left and Behind and scrap.”

Nothing.

How about: “Clinton and No and Child and scrap?”

Nope.

Try: “Big and bureaucratic and law and drill and kill and bye-bye arts and music -- and scrap?”

Actually, I didn’t do that last one. But I found that it wasn’t Clinton who had spoken of abolishing NCLB, but fellow Democratic candidate and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, hovering somewhere in the low single digits in popularity and having little to lose. The law, he said, is “a burden on schools, it’s an unfunded mandate, it hurts all kinds of kids and achievement.”

That’s not going to happen, of course. Once federal programs get created they have a way of hanging around far after their usefulness has expired, and NCLB will probably be no exception. There will be more “reform,” more “safe harbor” provisions, more arcane federal regulations and procedures that fill countless computer files and sap the time and energy of school boards, teachers, and administrators.

But what if? What if, by some miracle, Richardson got his way and NCLB was indeed abolished? What if the federal government simply declared victory and went home? You could argue that the bad things about NCLB would be gone but the good would remain. There would be much less fear of failure among school staff -- much less teaching to the test and “drill and kill” -- and more thoughtful approaches to educating the whole child. At the same time, states and school districts would have set up mechanisms for tracking the progress of all students, from all ethnic and economic groups, and would be unable to hide behind average scores, as they might have done in the past.

Some would argue that, absent the threats of NCLB, schools would return to past practices, and poor and minority kids would be left behind. Maybe. But I think there is enough of a public mandate to educate all children -- even without NCLB -- that dispensing with the law would have mainly good consequences.

What do you think? I’d be interested to hear your comments.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

The aliens are coming! In fact, they’re already here. They’ve infiltrated your neighborhoods, your businesses -- they’re even in your schools. But don’t worry: members of the Virginia General Assembly are on patrol. In fact, they’ve introduced more than 100 immigration-related bills to deal with the invasion.

Among the Virginia offerings: one bill to prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public colleges, and another requiring K-12 students to present valid birth certificates before enrolling. But my home state isn’t the only one getting into the border enforcement business. In Oklahoma, for example, State Rep. Randy Terrill has introduced a bill requiring schools to report how many illegal immigrant children are in their classes and the cost of educating them.

“Show of hands, please. We can just report that with our AYP.”

As you can imagine, illegal immigrants everywhere are flocking to turn themselves in.

Actually, no. In fact, according to a New York Times article last week about the city of Waukegan, Ill., near Chicago, much of the community is living in fear, avoiding public places, cancelling school meetings, bypassing downtown. The crackdown has even hurt legal immigrants, whose ethnic businesses are failing because customers are too afraid to shop. (To which, I, a loyal Know Nothing, can only say: “Who’d have thunk?”)

I could go on, but you get the point. Yes, we have an illegal immigration problem in this country. But the answer is not to victimize children and families and young people who want to better themselves (and, in the process, America) by getting a college education.

The Urban Institute (www.urban.org) touches on a small part of the issue in its 2007 report Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children. One of the communities studied -- Grand Island, Neb. -- was also featured in 2007’s Education Vital Signs.

I haven’t had space to even mention the presidential campaign and the contest, on the Republican side, to see who can sound the toughest on a group that represents some of America’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. Maybe later.

But it’s going to get ugly, if it hasn’t already; and educators better be prepared for the impact of all this turmoil on their students.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Chalk it up to January blahs, but I just can’t get excited about this new coalition and its call for more imaginative and creative instruction in the public schools. According to the group’s recent poll, a solid 30 percent of voters -- the so-called “Imagine Nation” -- say “incorporating building the capacities of the imagination into core courses is extremely critical.”

And what’s wrong with that, oh bilious blogger? Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just that, well … Isn’t it obvious?

Apparently not.

“Educators get it. Students get it. The public gets it,” said John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, speaking at a news conference in Washington, D.C., last week “We hope the policymakers get it.”

I fear, like those at the press conference, that No Child Left Behind has so pushed instruction -- especially instruction for disadvantaged kids -- to the “drill and kill” side of the spectrum that it will take years to undo the damage. However, speakers at the press conference say there’s a large constituency that will back candidates who support more enlightened instruction.

Trouble is, Mr. Pessimist points out, there’s no NCLB militating for more imaginative and creative classrooms. At least not yet, and I don’t know how you would devise one.

It seems the pendulum swings this way and that, and never stops in the middle. Are you for “imagination and creativity” or “Core Knowledge?” “Direct instruction” or “project-based learning?” Well, can’t you be for all of them? For example, I could imagine a U.S. history course in which students would be taught the basics of what’s happened, from colonial America onward. They would even know a few names and dates! There would even be lectures! Part of the class would be devoted to this teacher-directed instruction, but there would also be class discussion of compelling themes in U.S. history. Finally, students would have the chance to pursue subjects that interested them in greater depth, in the form of projects, performances, and research papers.

The key is finding teachers who could do this kind of teaching. And, studies show, it’s disadvantaged children who have less access to them. For example, a University of Missouri study released this month found that “67.6 percent of high-socioeconomic status students are taught by highly qualified teachers, compared with 53.2 percent of low-socioeconomic status students.”

“This opportunity gap of 14.4 percent is significantly larger than the international average of 2.5 percent,” the report says.

So it’s not just a problem of educational theory and practice: It’s a problem of equity as well.

I applaud the coalition for pushing for more creative and innovating classrooms in the public schools, and for championing the arts and music, which are so vital to a well-rounded education. I just feel it’s got a big job ahead.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

When I was once a reporter covering the White House during the Clinton years, someone told me, “When the going gets tough, Clinton visits a school.”

Sure enough, he dropped by school after school during the Monica Lewinsky and ensuing impeachment scandals, sometimes proposing a new program, sometimes hawking one of his many initiatives, sometimes just touting public education. Those visits were a temporary distraction from the bad news—somehow, being in a school made everyone feel better.

I thought of Clinton’s woes when President Bush actually mentioned education in the first 15 minutes of the State of the Union this week. Many analysts believe Bush’s speech brought up past victories such as No Child Left Behind in hopes of deflecting attention from his dismal approval ratings and desperate attempts to stay relevant in his last year of office.

“Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results,” he said to applause mainly on the GOP side.

Problem is, if Bush tries to take that message to public schools, he might hear from the many school administrators who want the law changed, or scrapped entirely. Sen. Ted Kennedy, a top supporter of NCLB when it first passed, appeared to wince at his words. (And in another irony, Bush also touted the D.C. voucher program and called for more vouchers for students in failing schools, even though D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was a guest of honor of First Lady Laura Bush.)

But even if Bush had to bear a few critics, wouldn’t it be better to fix the law now and leave office with a significant accomplishment? Since most Democrats in Congress want to hold off on the reauthorization, my completely unsolicited advice to the president would be to take a cue from his predecessor and stage some school visits, talk to folks there, and push hard for changes this year. There’s still time to build a better legacy, at least in the eyes of school officials.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

The slowing economy has forced homeowners to foreclose on their property, companies to layoff employees and consumers to hold on to their money. Now it has forced education officials in Florida to pull back on some of its state assessment tests.

Eric Smith, the state’s education commissioner, proposed holding off on making the writing section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) a graduation requirement. He also recommended nixing an updated multiple-choice portion of the writing exam administered to fourth, eighth and 10th-grade.

All told, the changes--- which state board members have agreed to--- would save Florida an estimated $2.5 million. It’s not chump change, but it won’t be enough to stem a tidal wave of financial problems the state has coming its way.

The white-hot housing market has cooled significantly in Florida, with property values plummeting, home sales stagnating and foreclosures rising. To make matters worse for the school districts--- which depend on property taxes for their local revenue--- voters in January approved an increase in the state’s homestead exemption, which opponents (including educators) say would offer scant tax relief but cripple public agencies. Florida certainly has a rough economic road ahead.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

I ran a roundtable session for National Affiliate members at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando at the end of March. One new board member who attended had a story that will sound familiar to many of you.

He was having a problem with another board member. Whenever this member wanted to stonewall an idea, she asked, "is it best practice?"

The gentleman at my session asked, half-jokingly, if a "best practices" manual existed somewhere.

We at ASBJ hope that our Magna Awards program can serve as a starting point toward finding those best practices. For 14 years, we have been recognizing excellence in board and district programs on nearly any topic you can come up with.

Want to know how a district is dealing with dropouts? Magna has it. Want to find out how to engage Spanish-speaking parents with the schools? Magna has it.

Each year, we ask an independent panel of judges to evaluate the 300 or so entries we receive each year and find the standout programs. The entries are in three enrollment categories: under 5,000, 5,000 to 20,000, and over 20,000. This way, districts are competing against other districts of the same size.

We honored the 2008 Magna Award winners at the School Leaders' Luncheon at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando. The three grand prize winners took home checks of $3,500 each; all of the winners are featured in a supplement to ASBJ that ran in April.

Look online at the 2008 winners; then browse through the past winners. You'll find the contact names and e-mails of the district contacts so you can get more details about their wining programs.

While you're on the site, consider applying for a 2009 Magna Award, so you can add your programs to our growing "best practices" list.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

I learned the phrase “24-seven” from a gifted African American student in Prince Georges County, Md. It was 10 years ago, and I was there to do a story on the restructuring of Benjamin Stoddert Middle School, an underperforming school in one of the nation’s largest majority-black counties.

I wonder where he is now, especially after reading a disturbing -- but not altogether surprising -- article in Education Week saying research shows that the greatest widening of the black-white achievement gap occurs not among the general population, but among higher-performing students as they move from elementary school into middle and high school.

In truth, I can’t tell you for sure that he was gifted, just that he was obviously very, very bright. Yet the sad truth was that students like him in Stoddert’s gifted and talented classes would be merely performing on grade level if they moved across the Potomac River to the more affluent areas of Arlington or Fairfax County. That’s what happens, researchers note in the article, if the general population is doing poorly: Teachers tend to teach to the middle, and the middle at Stoddert, located near the distressed neighborhoods that border Washington, D.C., was lower.

After several years of being taught at a level lower than students at more affluent schools, it’s no wonder that the achievement gap tends to widen most noticeably at the top.

There are other possible reasons for this trend. Just as there can be disadvantages in attending a majority black school, some African Americans may feel out of place in an overwhelmingly white one -- and determined not to “act white” and do their best. Out-of-school disparities among families can exacerbate the achievement gap as well: think of the academic advantages provided by computer camps, piano lessons, and private tutoring.

Finally, add the influence of NCLB and its single-minded focus on raising the achievement of students who test below state standards. It’s a worthy goal, of course, but there are fewer of these students in the more affluent schools, and that encourages the teachers in these schools to adopt a more enriching curriculum across the board.

The high-end achievement gap is a serious challenge for board members, teachers, and administrators. But it’s not insurmountable. And educators, who tend to be optimists by nature, know that. The more we learn about the reasons for the achievement gap, the more effectively we can begin to reduce it and move toward a public education system that offers all students the chance to reach their potential. Education is not the only tool in the struggle for equal opportunity and social justice, but it is indispensible.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

A principal at a low-performing school in Sacramento, Calif., changed the racial designation of four of his students—students who were classified as black but whose parents had actually marked “mixed race” or no race on their enrollment forms. By doing so, the principal avoided having his school dinged by No Child Left Behind sanctions because there were not enough students in the low-performing “black” category to count.

Obviously, this principal was gaming the system (apparently with the permission of the parents who were responsible for reporting their child’s race). But his actions raise a lot of questions about the use of race in school data and whether we should rely on strict categorizations or even use race as a factor when overwhelming evidence shows family income level and early childhood development has more bearing on a student’s success.

NCLB was designed in large part to expose the discrepancies between the academic performance of white and Asian students and their black and Hispanic peers. And it has done so. At the same time, we are seeing increasing numbers of mixed-race students enter our schools with no universal guidelines on how to categorize them.

A Sacramento Bee analysis showed the impact a few tweaks can make when using data to analyze a school’s performance. Two years of test data for some 6,000 California schools showed that 80 of those initially fell short of their annual NCLB benchmarks but met them after making “demographic corrections.” Of those, 12 schools had changed students’ racial classification, 50 had reclassified English language learners, and 11 had changed student demographics so that an entire group was rendered statistically insignificant.

Several years ago, when NCLB was first taking hold, I asked an elementary principal how she verified the race of her students. She said she didn’t—she couldn’t—because it was all self-reported by parents or guardians. Then she mentioned that even though she was white and her husband had both white and Hispanic ancestry, they classified their high-achieving children as Hispanic to help their schools meet NCLB requirements. It was just another example of how so many children do not fit neatly into racial categories—or in some cases, our assumptions.

We need to find better ways to focus on the truly disadvantaged students who are struggling -- regardless of their race.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor