In California, reclassifying students can change NCLB results
Over the past two years, 80 California schools got "out of trouble" with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) after changing the way they classify their students, a Sacramento Bee analysis has found. The changes nudged their status from failing to passing under the federal law. The state allows school officials to comb through test results every August, changing students' demographic information to correct mistakes that can happen, for example, when clerks register new students or when districts swap student files. Thousands of schools make demographic corrections, and the majority have no bearing on their NCLB status. But the correction process may allow some schools to escape the scrutiny intended by NCLB, the Bee found. The state doesn't verify whether the changes schools make accurately reflect the students they serve. And the point of NCLB lies in separating test scores by race―then demanding educators bring all children to the same level. The law says all major demographic groups―categorized by race, income, English fluency and disability status―must meet test score targets that increase over time. If one group doesn't meet the target, the entire school faces the stigma of low performance and a series of consequences. Even when a group is small enough to fall off the radar, its students still count toward a school's overall test scores. But lumping students of all backgrounds together has allowed schools to camouflage the scores of students they have under-served. That's exactly what was supposed to change when NCLB became law in 2002.
The Bee analyzed two years of test data for roughly 6,000 California schools subject to NCLB―those that receive federal Title 1 funds for serving poor children. Eighty schools initially fell short of the law's test targets but met them after making demographic corrections. Of those: 12 schools changed students' race classification; 50 schools reclassified English learners as fluent in the language―or vice versa; seven schools changed which students are considered disabled or economically disadvantaged; and 11 schools changed student demographics in a way that rendered an entire group statistically insignificant. All told, these schools reclassified 985 students, resulting in increased math and English proficiency rates. By making some demographic groups numerically insignificant, the scores of an additional 815 students were not counted as part of a demographic category. Not all schools that made demographic changes end up doing better under NCLB. Compared with the 80 schools that improved their standing after demographic corrections, another 33 California schools saw their status drop from passing to failing after their changes. At many schools, students move in and out of special education. Electronic records become outdated. For those reasons, California will always need to allow schools to correct demographic information, said Rachel Perry, director of accountability for the state Department of Education. Changes to students' ethnic categories are much less common, the Bee's analysis shows. But when it happens, state education officials don't check to see why, Perry said. They leave it up to a private contractor―Educational Testing Service―which performs minimal checks.
Source: Sacramento Bee, 4/27/08, By Laurel Rosenhall & Phillip Reese