PROVIDENCE -- Rhode Island is the second state in New England to win approval for its new state accountability system from the U.S. secretary of education.
The federal education law, No Child Left Behind, requires states to describe how they will close achievement gaps and ensure that all students reach academic proficiency by 2014. States must also develop annual state and school report cards, like Rhode Island's Information Works, that inform parents about school, district and state progress.
Rhode Island is the 18th state to get the go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Education; Massachusetts received its approval two months ago, under a fast-track program established by the federal government.
At a State House ceremony yesterday, Susan Sclafani, counselor to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, praised Rhode Island for being "in the vanguard of those who recognize that No Child Left Behind is the right thing to do."
Everyone from Governor Carcieri to Rhode Island Education Commissioner Peter McWalters lauded the federal law for demanding that schools and states raise the performance of all students, not just white, middle-class ones.
But the sweeping federal act has dismayed superintendents and teachers from Oregon to Rhode Island, many of whom contend that the federal approach is punitive, heavy-handed and seeks to dismantle successful reform plans already in place in many states.
Schools that do not show progress face a series of sanctions, from giving parents the right to move their children to state intervention. States that do not comply have been threatened with a loss of federal school aid.
James DiPrete, chairman of the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, alluded to those tensions yesterday when he said, "In the beginning, we didn't like what we were hearing or reading [about the federal law]."
Yesterday, Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy criticized the Bush administration for pressing for wholesale changes, then failing to pay for them.
Reed, in a prepared statement, said President Bush agreed to spend $16 billion when he signed the federal legislation in January 2002. But he only requested $11.3 billion in his actual budget.
"I find this visit by the U.S. Education Department to be disingenuous," Kennedy said. "I have no problem with the goals of NCLB. But it is wrong for the federal government to impose these sweeping changes and then offer no assistance in carrying them out."
Sclafani, however, said Rhode Island is getting a 25-percent increase in Title 1 dollars over the current $39.2 million. Title 1 refers to a federal program that targets schools where a majority of the students live at or near the poverty line. Approximately one-third of Rhode Island's schools receive Title 1 funds.
Both Carcieri and McWalters said yesterday that Rhode Island has many of the systems in place required by federal law. The state already tests students in selected grades, compares the performance of schools and measures their progress, and has established a series of consequences for schools that consistently fail to improve.
However, the new federal law required Rhode Island to tweak its existing accountability plan. Under the current system, schools are only given credit for students who achieve proficiency or above.
Under the federal plan, schools and districts will receive some credit for those students who have not achieved proficiency.
Under this so-called index system, each student is graded from 0 to 100, with a score of 100 awarded to a child who has achieved the standard with honors and 25 awarded to a child who has shown little evidence of meeting the standard. A zero would be given to a child who didn't take the test.
All schools must reach 100-percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year. How they get there is left up to each state. Rhode Island has defined adequate yearly progress as a series of incremental steps, with schools required to make the most improvement at the end of the 10-year time frame.
Not only must schools reach proficiency, but individual subgroups defined by race, income, ethnicity and other categories must also show steady improvement. If any of the subgroups fails to meet its goals, the school will be classified as low-performing.
As a result, the state education department "expects the number of low-performing schools to increase during the first year under the new accountability system."
