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FOI Columns
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November-December 2003

With so much data now, story potential abounds on school testing front

by Charles Davis

Rather than preach this issue about where freedom of information is lacking, I ’d like to use this space to point out one rich area of reporting literally overflowing with access.

Some stories just beg for data, the kind of number crunching made possible by the rare confluence of politics and transparency.

A case in point is the federal government ’s No Child Left Behind law, a mammoth piece of legislation that produces all sorts of school-testing data ripe for the picking. Journalists across the country are using the public data to tell the story of a law long on intent but, many say, short on realism.

So many great stories have sprung from the school-testing arena that no column could do them all justice, so let ’s zero in on a few of the most important questions about the No Child Left Behind regime - stories full of potential for reporters looking for local angles that demonstrate the power of public information.

First, and most importantly, there are the requirements of the No Child Left Behind program. While teachers and administrators agree the intent of the law is noble, they question whether its goal of 100 percent student proficiency on state assessment tests is realistic - particularly when all students, regardless of their needs and ability levels, are to be held to the same standards.

A case in point: Columbia, Mo., public schools far outperformed minimal proficiency standards under the NCLB standards, but many were flagged because excessive numbers of students did not, or could not, take the state ’s assessment tests last year. The catch lies in the fine print: The law mandates that all students - newly arrived immigrants, students with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders right along with the rest - must take the test. Those who can ’t complete the test count against the school, regardless of context.

Thus, schools in more urban areas with greater diversity face potential sanction merely because they are magnets for English-as-a-second-language students. Students nationwide must test proficient or higher on state assessments by 2014.If schools fail to meet the gradually increasing targets over the next several years, they face consequences ranging from in-district school choice and additional tutoring to school restructuring, replacement of staff and takeovers by states or private companies.

This is but one issue that begs for comparative, data-driven reporting using the reams of scores available at the school and district level nationwide. It ’s simply not enough to post the scores, as so many newspapers are doing: It is incumbent upon journalists to delve deeper, and to ask questions about the tests themselves.

The NCLB standards are generating interesting new records for reporters to use. For example, the law states that all teachers hired to teach core academic subjects must be “highly qualified ” by the end of the 2005-06 school year. Highly qualified is defined as a teacher with full certification, a bachelor ’s degree and demonstrated competence in subject knowledge and teaching. Few, if any, schools currently meet those standards, and the first data on teacher qualification should provide lots of fodder for document-driven stories about this critical topic.

Then there are the results themselves: miles of statistics just waiting for reporters to make sense of them. The stories expose the many emerging problems with NCLB as written. In Olathe, Kan., where students traditionally have far exceeded any educational standards, the schools received a failing grade under NCLB.

Olathe is a town known throughout the region for its excellent schools, where high school students score well above national and state averages on the ACT exam, and where more than half of the elementary schools have achieved the high Standard of Excellence on state reading tests. Sixty-five percent of Olathe teachers have a master ’s degree or better. Olathe ’s pupil-teacher ratio is low.

According to The Kansas City Star’s excellent coverage of the issue, the assessment test scores of 61 Olathe children who are learning English brought the entire district down. The federal law requires that students ’ scores be reported districtwide and for subgroups based on race, English proficiency, poverty and other factors.

A subgroup of 30 or more students who can ’t speak English or who have learning disabilities can miss the proficiency mark on a state test and affect the rating for the entire school - or district.

Olathe Superintendent Ron Wimmer told The Star the federal law is “out of touch with reality.”

“I don ’t object to accountability,” he said. “I don ’t object to assessment, but we had 61 kids who, through no fault of their own … made it appear there is something wrong with a system that is serving 23,000 kids.”

The arbitrary nature of such high-stakes testing means that administrators under intense pressure to perform might cut corners. U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige’s meteoric rise began in his old base in the Houston public schools, which served as one of the catalysts for NCLB.

Paige never misses an opportunity to tout the Houston “miracle,” and as the Houston media have doggedly tracked the district ’s numbers, the miracle moniker seems more accurate than ever.

As reported in Augusta legal firm probing the dropout numbers at Sharpstown High School found that a “complete breakdown in the chain of command ” allowed the school ’s top management to report dropout data to the state that school officials should have known was false.

The school, with 1,700 students - many considered at-risk - was reporting zero dropouts. An investigation determined that computer network specialist Kenneth Cuadra changed dropout records in a school computer to show no one had quit school in 2000-01.Cuadra was subsequently disciplined.

A series of internal audits and external investigations revealed that nearly all the schools examined in Houston were vastly underreporting dropouts.

Upon finding nearly 3,000 uncounted dropouts in Houston schools, the Texas Education Agency threatened to lower the district ’s rating to unacceptable. The sanction was averted when district officials promised to keep more accurate student records.

However noble its intent, it ’s clear that No Child Left Behind was designed with impossible expectations and might well be what many critics warned: an attempt by voucher proponents in Congress to ease the way for tax-supported vouchers for private schools.

This may or may not be the case, but journalists have no excuses this time. The data is public, the sources eager to talk. In a nation battling endemic secrecy on virtually every front, school testing is an oasis of openness.

Charles Davis is executive director of the Freedom of Information Center, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and a member of IRE ’s First Amendment task force.