Fast Report

11/22/05 -- Louisiana lawmakers consider school takeovers

• A proposal to strip the New Orleans school board of most of its authority over city schools overcame another political hurdle Nov. 14 when the Louisiana legislature overwhelmingly approved several bills that would put state officials in charge.

The legislature still must deal with differences in House and Senate versions of a proposal championed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco that would give the state control over 102 city schools with performance scores below the state average. A competing bill calls for the state to take over all schools in Orleans Parish.

The Louisiana School Boards Association successfully lobbied for an amendment to limit the state’s intervention efforts solely to the Orleans Parish school system, says Executive Director Freddie Whitford. “We represent 68 school systems,”.he says, “Let’s not paint everybody with the same brush.”

Report analyzes AYP flexibility in NCLB

• In granting new flexibility changing the way states can determine whether schools have made “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education has made it easier for schools and districts to meet annual test score targets, according to a new report from the Center on Education Policy.

The department has approved a variety of changes in state strategies for calculating AYP, the report says, which could result in more schools and districts meeting state-set targets for the percentage of students scoring at the proficient level on state tests.

But the new flexibility makes it difficult to tell whether student achievement is improving based on the number of schools making AYP from year to year.

Forty-nine states are now using confidence intervals, a statistical technique similar to a margin of error that creates a certain amount of “wiggle room” around the test results for a subgroup or school and makes it easier for a school to demonstrate AYP. 

Other popular changes in state AYP policies approved by the department include:

• performance indices that give schools “partial credit” for the performance of students below the proficient level.

• increased minimum subgroup sizes, which means, in many schools, subgroups do not get counted for AYP purposes.

Slight rise reported in graduation rate

• A new study from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) says the “averaged freshman graduation rate” for U.S. public school students was 73.9 percent in 2002-03 and 72.6 percent in 2001-02.

This rate provides an estimate of the percentage of high school students who graduate on time. NCES used aggregate student enrollment data to estimate the size of an incoming freshman class and aggregate counts of the number of diplomas awarded four years later.

The incoming freshman class size is estimated by summing the enrollment in eight grade in one year, ninth grade for the next year, and 10th grade for the year after and then dividing by three. The averaging is intended to account for high grade retentions in the ninth grade.

For the class of 2002-03, New Jersey had the highest “averaged freshman graduation rate,” 87 percent. Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wisconsin also had graduation rates higher than 85 percent. The District of Columbia had the lowest graduation rate, 59.6 percent, in 2002-03.

Man in jail elected to school board

• A newly elected school board member in the Romoland, Calif., school district won’t be attending many board meetings -- he is in jail.

Randy Logan Hale declared his candidacy in August, then was returned to prison in September for violating his parole on 1998 convictions for spousal abuse and drug possession. Law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation to determine whether Hale broke the law in getting his name on the ballot.

Hale received 831 votes in the Nov. 8 election, making him the third-highest vote getter and thus the winner of one of three open positions on the Romoland school board, says Superintendent Roland Skumawitz. The district, about 70 miles north of San Diego, has just two schools, both of them elementaries.

“I have no idea why he ran,” Skumawitz says, noting that Hale never went to any school board meetings or candidate forums.

And he doesn’t know why so many people voted for Hale. It’s been speculated that Hale probably got votes because his name was at the top of the ballot.“It’s like when you’re looking for a plumber in the yellow pages and you select AAA,” Skumawitz says.

Public feedback sought on NCLB

• The Public Education Network is holding hearings around the country over the next few months on what is working and not working with the No Child Left Behind Act. (Visit www.publiceducation.org for a list of cities and dates.)