No Child Left Behind

District falls farther from federal guideline
The latest graduation rates are a sinking sign for a school district with the motto "Every Child. Every Day. College Bound." Only 66.9 percent of the 2004 freshman class at Memphis City Schools received diplomas this spring, down nearly 3 percentage points from last year.

By Mike Petrilli
If many recent polls are to be believed, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And this week we got an important glimpse into the dynamics of his education team that might preview what we can expect in the four years to come.

Refugee staff is key to the International Community School. But with credentials lost in war or flight and English not yet perfect, they are also a liability.
By Mary Wiltenburg
Not everyone can do it. The geography lesson is a riot of pens, plastic knives, and sawed-apart oranges, as sixth graders struggle to turn fruit into globes.

Test scores not up to standard in 33% of Illinois schools, state board says. About 1,200 schools missed the mark, according to figures released Tuesday during a State Board of Education meeting in Springfield.

Thousands of Ohio students who take state standardized tests aren't part of the final grades reported by school districts. But the state says it cannot know for sure whether school districts are removing students from the testing rolls appropriately. Nearly 900 times last year, districts' passing rates climbed above the state standard on a test after student results were dropped.

Educators Brace for Large Numbers of Schools in Improvement
Even at the outset of No Child Left Behind, when Delaware’s education department issued its first set of annual student achievement targets, state education secretary Valerie Woodruff knew “there would be a time when this would become a perfect storm.”

Rick Egan
Rising test scores are no reason to celebrate, author Alfie Kohn told teachers at the Utah Education Association (UEA) convention on Friday. Schools that improve test scores do so at the expense of other subjects and ideas, he said.

By SAM DILLON
The Brownsville Independent School District in Texas won what may be the nation’s most important prize for excellence in urban education on Tuesday, the same day that Texas authorities announced that the district had failed to meet achievement targets for two years under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

One-third of Texas school districts did not achieve the so-called Adequate Yearly Progress required by the law, but only two area districts risk being penalized

Responding to heavy criticism, East Baton Rouge Parish public school leaders said Monday their plan to reshuffle test scores is legal, fair and should not be tossed out by Louisiana’s top school board. “We are not lowering standards,” EBR Superintendent Charlotte Placide said. “We are not lowering anything.”

Local schools are enrolling a growing number of students who don't speak English – students who typically fare poorly on standardized tests – at a time when the federal No Child Left Behind Act calls for unprecedented test score gains.

Just two months ago, the Texas Education Agency released a glowing report card for Bexar County: The number of top-rated schools here more than doubled.   Bragging rights were posted on marquees at newly designated exemplary schools, backs were slapped and congratulations flowed.

Today will be different.

Since receiving the green light from the Utah Legislature on computer-adaptive testing, State Office of Education officials are now hitting up the federal government for approval

By MAURA J. CASEY
The biggest determinant of cheating on exams is not the values that students are exposed to at home, but peer norms at school. Surveys show that cheating in school — plagiarism, forbidden collaboration on assignments, copying homework and cheating on exams — has soared since researchers first measured the phenomenon on a broad scale at 99 colleges in the mid-1960s.