Urban district views NCLB as an opportunity to improve schools

10/28/03 -- With 30 of 48 schools failing to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals this fall, it wouldn't be surprising if school officials in Norfolk, Va., were less than enthusiastic about the No Child Left Behind Act.

After all, the AYP results could be seen as disheartening for an urban school system that in recent years has won praise for its success in raising student academic performance and closing the racial achievement gap.

Yet, talk to local school officials, and their attitudes toward the massive federal law are hardly negative. "While there are difficult challenges to meet the standards of No Child Left Behind, we view it more as an opportunity," says Superintendent John O. Simpson. "The law gives us opportunities to address the needs of all students."

Reforms already in place

Gloria Hagans, senior director for compensatory programs, voices a similar view. "We're not at all panicked or pessimistic. I've seen the difference the law has made in people in looking at the big picture."

The ease in which Norfolk school officials appear to accept NCLB is somewhat at odds with the opinions aired by many in the education community. While generally supportive of the goals of the federal law, many are quick to voice concerns about seemingly unrealistic goals and flawed mandates that are causing thousands of schools nationwide to fail to make AYP.

That's not to say Norfolk officials are unconcerned about NCLB -- or that they dismiss the challenges that lie ahead. They are concerned about inadequate funding to meet the federal mandates, for example.

Yet, officials say the 37,000-student school system has a distinct advantage over many urban districts across the nation. Well before NCLB, the school system introduced a series of successful reforms that presaged the demands of the new federal law.

One advantage enjoyed by Norfolk, school officials say, is the district's five-year focus on the academic needs of minority and impoverished students, which has put it a step ahead in its efforts to satisfy NCLB mandates.

Whereas some school systems are scrambling to shift resources in response to AYP results, Norfolk already has targeted new teachers, technology, and other resources to schools in greatest need.

Pressure for results

This year, for example, St. Helena Elementary School saw its budget jump nearly $200,000, says Principal Lillian C. Thomas. The extra money has paid for a literacy teacher, a math teacher who provides assistance to the lowest-performing students, and an "instructional specialist," who provides training and instructional assistance to classroom teachers, as well as other services.

What NCLB is adding to this initiative is more pressure to produce results, particularly in Title I schools, she says. "We are looking closer at how we are actually utilizing the money, and we're getting more accurate data to show that the funds are being used appropriately."

This past year, for example, the school system as a whole adopted a new focus on reading, school officials say. Staff development training also has focused on helping teachers improve instruction for high-risk students.

Given the number of schools that failed to make AYP this year, you might expect some expression of unease from local officials. But they are more likely to point out that the AYP numbers belie the progress that the school system has made.

For example, officials note that third-grade English scores have climbed from 38 percent in 1997 to 58 percent this year, and that grade 5 English scores have risen 20 percent. Gains also have been seen in math and writing scores at all grade levels.

As an urban school, the effects of poverty are reflected in student academic achievement, but as Simpson points out, 54 percent of the city's schools are ranked as either "fully accredited" or "provisionally accredited/meets state standards" -- a significant improvement from just 4 percent receiving these rankings only a few years ago.

Such success cannot be overshadowed, and, indeed, the district has earned a growing reputation for excellence in the education community.

The school system was honored with a Plaque for Progress in Performance by the U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award program and was a finalist for this year's Broad Prize for Urban Education.

And there is reason for optimism that Norfolk will show great strides in AYP next year. Although lagging reading scores hurt some schools, two-thirds of those failing to meet AYP this year were the victims of a snafu over NCLB regulations.

The problem wasn't limited to Norfolk schools, either. After exempting many special education and limited-English-proficient students from taking state tests, state officials agreed under protest to the U.S. Department of Education's demand that the state retroactively apply the NCLB requirement that at least 95 percent of students take tests in reading and math.

The result: 21 Norfolk schools failed to make AYP because fewer than 95 percent of students in at least one subgroup took state tests. For example, St. Helena would have made AYP if just six additional students had not been exempted from testing.

'We can make it work'

No school principal can be happy with such a turn of events. But, at St. Helena, Thomas says her school's failure to make AYP is the kind of growing pains she can accept about the new law.

"I'm concerned about it," she acknowledges. "But I really believe as long as the federal government lets everyone know what the rules will be, and they don't change them, we can make it work."

School officials point to similar problems when the state released its first round of Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in 1998. It took years for the school district to align the curriculum with state standards and use test data to target and fix problem areas.

This year, it helps that the latest AYP numbers also have no practical impact on school operations, say school officials. This is the first year that Virginia is measuring AYP in such detail, so it is the first year that any city school has failed to meet state standards for NCLB.

"Because we have been working over the past several years on the goal of 'All means all' -- our own version of NCLB -- we have not found ourselves in the 'needs improvement' status for any of our schools," Simpson says.

That means school officials have yet to confront NCLB requirements to provide supplemental services or school choice to students in low-performing schools. And they have at least another year to meet the challenges of AYP.

Norfolk officials plan to make the most of that time. While some school systems began only a year or two ago to look seriously at disaggregated data on student subgroups, Norfolk officials are well versed in the practice.

A year ago, they stepped up their efforts by merging staff development and curriculum instruction staffs into a single program that will help push data-driven decision making and best practices to the instructional level.

The latest AYP numbers are seen as "an additional data source for us," Hagans says. "We're peeling away the layers with a subgroup focus. This has allowed the district to look closer at this kind of additional data, and based on that, we know there are some things we need to be working on."

But the school system already has years of SOL data that's been used to target resources where needed, so while new data will help fine-tune their efforts, school officials say they don't anticipate any significant diversion in funding because of NCLB.

"We believe we have a strong enough foundation -- an emphasis on data-driven decision making, research-based classroom best practices, and differentiation of instruction -- so that any school that might fall into the 'needs improvement' category will be supported and in that status for a very short period of time," Simpson says.

Yet, the impact of NCLB is being felt in other ways. To respond to the mandate for highly qualified teachers and paraprofessionals, school officials have joined forces with nearby Tidewater Community College in a program to help teacher aides complete two years of college. The school system also has set up its own training program to certify aides as having the educational qualifications required by law.

The school system managed to boost salaries 6 percent last year to help recruit and retain teachers with necessary credentials, says Denise Schnitzer, chief of staff for the district. It also pays up to six credit hours of training, a recruitment benefit that is proving useful in helping teachers who lack specific coursework to meet NCLB standards.

Educating the community

One area where NCLB has not had any apparent impact is in undermining public opinion about the local schools, a concern that has been voiced in other districts across the nation.

Vincent Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Norfolk schools, says he's "not aware of any large backlash."

One reason that such fears have proven unfounded to date is that the local newspaper has provided balanced coverage of AYP results and provided a good explanation of the challenges in the law, he says.

Meanwhile, school officials have worked hard to educate the community through letters to parents, fliers, and online information about the law's likely impact on Norfolk schools, and the district publishes regular NCLB updates in the school system's newsletter.

As things now stand, school officials say they feel confident that they can use NCLB to make positive changes to their school system.

"If we fail, if we don't make it, I think we'll have moved along a lot more than if we hadn't tried," Hagans says. "Within the district, I really am not seeing any pessimism. Maybe it's because we started this journey some time ago, and we feel it's a worthy journey."