Subgroups test No Child Left Behind

BOISE – Not all Idaho students are being counted under the federal education bill No Child Left Behind, and that’s fine with Sherilyn Paris, who teaches new English learners at Franklin Elementary School.

“The requirements they have for (Limited English Proficiency) students are absurd,” said Paris, whose job is to help children from places as varied as Ethiopia, Egypt, Mexico, and Russia adjust to school in Boise, where they must learn and take tests in English.

“These students are by definition limited in their proficiency of English, and so for them to be expected to have the same proficiency as your general education student is just such an obviously ridiculous assumption,” she said.

Under a provision of the education law, schools can ignore the scores of racial or other groups – such as new English learners, or students whose language proficiency is limited – if those groups are too small to be statistically significant. In Idaho, such groups are not counted unless they contain at least 34 students.

Because of that provision, dozens of black, Hispanic, special education and other students aren’t having their scores reported separately in Idaho.

“They’re being counted as part of the overall group,” said Luci Willits, a spokeswoman for the state Board of Education. But many schools do not separate scores for individual subgroups.

The 2002 Bush administration law requires Idaho’s public schools to test the state’s almost 262,000 students in reading and math, and report on the schools’ overall success. No scores are excluded from the overall measure. If a subgroup large enough to have its scores counted separately fails, the school can be identified as failing to meet satisfactory progress requirements and face sanctions.

In Meridian, Idaho’s largest school district, a little under half of the 25 elementary schools reported separate test results for students with disabilities, said Superintendent Linda Clark. But “we’re monitoring every single kid,” she said.

Many Idaho schools are so small they don’t split off the scores of any subgroups, said Ann Farris, federal programs director for the Boise School District.

“It’s much more common in rural areas to have no subgroups,” said Farris.

Even in Boise, Idaho’s largest city, some schools aren’t reporting results for subgroups.

Students who are learning in English for the first time shouldn’t be expected to take the same tests as students who have grown up with the language, Paris said.

“The problem is with bureaucrats who know nothing about education making these laws,” said Paris, who thinks the students who are new to English shouldn’t have to take the tests until they are proficient in English. “If they would sit down and watch these students taking these required tests, they would recognize maybe this isn’t really what we wanted. They would make better laws.”

At Boise’s Franklin Elementary, there are more than 100 students classified as English Language Learners or Limited English Proficiency – both subgroups that would be excluded if there were fewer than 34.

But even in schools where the numbers are below the cutoff, the data is reported as part of overall results, Farris said.

“In Boise, it hasn’t been an issue because most of our schools have at least two to three subgroups that are larger than the 34,” Farris said.

Some districts think that number, 34, should be higher, Willits said.

“Some of the districts would rather have it be 50, because there’s a fear out there that a few kids will determine Annual Yearly Progress for a school. But there is no move in Idaho to change the number,” she said.

Farris said that in schools with very small numbers of minority students or other subgroups, it was up to educators to make sure they’re not overlooked in classrooms.

People get concerned about schools without subgroups because they’re not certain the schools are “looking at those students’ progress and making sure they’re making gains,” Farris said. “That becomes the responsibility of that district and school.

“Even though that data isn’t reported out, there is still great data to look at the instruction and the performance of those individual students.”