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"Graphic Queen" <pagan@pagan.com> wrote in message
news:jlfc42duvjm0eo7n1b0pnama8scs4gpfmu@4ax.com...
> States Omitting Minorities' Test Scores
> By NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON, BEN FELLER and FRANK BASS, Associated Press
> Writers
> Tue Apr 18, 12:21 PM ET
>
> Laquanya Agnew and Victoria Duncan share a desk, a love of reading and
> a passion for learning. But because of a loophole in the No Child Left
> Behind Act, one second-grader's score in Tennessee counts more than
> the other's. That is because Laquanya is black, and Victoria is white.
> An Associated Press computer analysis has found Laquanya is among
> nearly 2 million children whose scores aren't counted when it comes to
> meeting the law's requirement that schools track how students of
> different races perform on standardized tests.
>
> The AP found that states are helping public schools escape potential
> penalties by skirting that requirement. And minorities - who
> historically haven't fared as well as whites in testing - make up the
> vast majority of students whose scores are excluded.
>
> The Education Department said that while it is pleased that nearly 25
> million students nationwide are now being tested regularly under the
> law, it is concerned that the AP found so many students aren't being
> counted by schools in the required racial categories.
>
> "Is it too many? You bet," Education Secretary     Margaret Spellings
> said in an interview. "Are there things we need to do to look at that,
> batten down the hatches, make sure those kids are part of the system?
> You bet."
>
> The plight of the two second-graders shows how a loophole in the law
> is allowing schools to count fewer minorities in required racial
> categories.
>
> There are about 220 students at West View Elementary School in
> Knoxville, Tenn., where     President Bush marked the second
> anniversary of the law's enactment in 2004. Tennessee schools have
> federal permission to exclude students' scores in required racial
> categories if there are fewer than 45 students in a group.
>
> There are more than 45 white students. Victoria counts.
>
> There are fewer than 45 black students. Laquanya does not.
>
> One of the consequences is that educators are creating a false picture
> of academic progress.
>
> "We're forcing districts and states to play games because the system
> is so broken, and that's not going to help at all," said Kathy
> Escamilla, a University of Colorado education professor. "Those are
> little games to prevent showing what's going on."
>
> Under the law signed by Bush in 2002, all public school students must
> be proficient in reading and math by 2014, although only children
> above second grade are required to be tested.
>
> Schools receiving federal poverty aid also must demonstrate annually
> that students in all racial categories are progressing or risk
> penalties that include extending the school year, changing curriculum
> or firing administrators and teachers.
>
> The law requires public schools to test more than 25 million students
> periodically in reading and math. No scores can be excluded from a
> school's overall measure.
>
> But the schools also must report scores by categories, such as race,
> poverty, migrant status, English proficiency and special education.
> Failure in any category means the whole school fails.
>
> States are helping schools get around that second requirement by using
> a loophole in the law that allows them to ignore scores of racial
> groups that are too small to be statistically significant.
>
> Suppose, for example, that a school has 2,000 white students and nine
> Hispanics. In nearly every state, the Hispanic scores wouldn't be
> counted because there aren't enough to provide meaningful information
> and because officials want to protect students' privacy.
>
> State educators decide when a group is too small to count. And they've
> been asking the government for exemptions to exclude larger numbers of
> students in racial categories. Nearly two dozen states have
> successfully petitioned the government for such changes in the past
> two years. As a result, schools can now ignore racial breakdowns even
> when they have 30, 40 or even 50 students of a given race in the
> testing population.
>
> Students must be tested annually in grades 3 through 8 and at least
> once in high school, usually in 10th grade. This is the first school
> year that students in all those grades must be tested, though schools
> have been reporting scores by race for the tests they have been
> administering since the law was approved.
>
> To calculate a nationwide estimate, the AP analyzed the 2003-04
> enrollment figures the government collected - the latest on record -
> and applied the current racial category exemptions the states use.
>
> Overall, the AP found that about 1.9 million students - or about 1 in
> every 14 test scores - aren't being counted under the law's racial
> categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores
> excluded as whites, the analysis showed.
>
> Less than 2 percent of white children's scores aren't being counted as
> a separate category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10
> percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores
> and nearly half of American Indian scores aren't broken out, AP found.
> Bush's home state of Texas - once cited as a model for the federal law
> - excludes scores for two entire groups. No test scores from Texas'
> 65,000 Asian students or from several thousand American Indian
> students are broken out by race. The same is true in Arkansas.
>
> Students whose tests aren't being counted in required categories also
> include Hispanics in California who don't speak English well, blacks
> in the Chicago suburbs, American Indians in the Northwest and special
> education students in Virginia.
>
> State educators defend the exemptions, saying minority students'
> performance is still being included in their schools' overall
> statistics even when they aren't being counted in racial categories.
> Excluded minority students' scores may be counted at the district or
> state level.
>
> Spellings said she believes educators are making a good-faith effort.
> "Are there people out there who will find ways to game the system?"
> she asked. "Of course. But on the whole ... I fully believe in my
> heart, mind and soul that educators are people of good will who care
> about kids and want them to find opportunity in schools."
>
> Bush has hailed the separate accounting of minority students as a
> vital feature of the law. "It's really essential we do that. It's
> really important," Bush said in a May 2004 speech. "If you don't do
> that, you're likely to leave people behind. And that's not right."
>
> Nonetheless, Bush's Education Department continues to give widely
> varying exemptions to states:
>
> _Oklahoma lets schools exclude the test scores from any racial
> category with 52 or fewer members in the testing population, one of
> the largest across-the-board exemptions. That means 1 in 5 children in
> the state don't have scores broken out by race.
>
> _Maryland, which tests about 150,000 students more than Oklahoma, has
> an exempt group size of just five. That means fewer than 1 in 100
> don't have scores counted.
>
> _Washington state has made 18 changes to its testing plan, according
> to a February report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. Vermont has
> made none. On average, states have made eight changes at either the
> state or federal level to their plans in the past five years, usually
> changing the size or accountability of subgroups whose scores were
> supposed to be counted.
>
> Toia Jones, a black teacher whose daughters attend school in a mostly
> white Chicago suburb, said the loophole is enabling states and schools
> to avoid taking concrete measures to eliminate an "achievement gap"
> between white and minority students.
>
> "With this loophole, it's almost like giving someone a trick bag to
> get out of a hole," she said. "Now people, instead of figuring out how
> do we really solve it, some districts, in order to save face or in
> order to not be faced with the sanctions, they're doing what they can
> to manipulate the data."
>
> Some students feel left behind, too.
>
> "It's terrible," said Michael Oshinaya, a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt
> High School in New York City who was among a group of black students
> whose scores weren't broken out as a racial category. "We're part of
> America. We make up America, too. We should be counted as part of
> America."
>
> Spellings' department is caught between two forces. Schools and states
> are eager to avoid the stigma of failure under the law, especially as
> the 2014 deadline draws closer. But Congress has shown little
> political will to modify the law to address their concerns. That
> leaves the racial category exemptions as a stopgap solution.
>
> "She's inherited a disaster," said David Shreve, an education policy
> analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The 'Let's
> Make a Deal' policy is to save the law from fundamental changes, with
> Margaret Spellings as Monty Hall."
>
> The solution may be to set a single federal standard for when minority
> students' scores don't have to be counted separately, said Ross
> Wiener, policy director for the Washington-based Education Trust.
>
> While the exemptions were created for good reasons, there's little
> doubt now that group sizes have become political, said Wiener, whose
> group supports the law.
>
> "They're asking the question, not how do we generate statistically
> reliable results, but how do we generate politically palatable
> results," he said.
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060418/ap_on_go_ot/no_child_loophole

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