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Schools lagging No Child Left Behind Law levels will be eligible to receive special help from the state
By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Wednesday, Jul 02, 2008
The federal government is cutting Ohio and five other states some slack in how they reach the goals of the No Child Left Behind law.
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced on Tuesday that Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and Maryland have been granted some flexibility in distinguishing between schools that are barely missing the mark and those that are way off the mark.
Under the No Child Left Behind law, districts and schools must show a certain level of student achievement each year, called adequate yearly progress, or AYP.
The law aims to have every student reading and doing math at or above grade level by 2014.
Missing this target on state-mandated reading or math tests brings increasing penalties, ranging from having to offer tutoring to losing a type of federal funding.
Currently, Ohio intervenes with extra help based on the number of years a district misses AYP.
Now the state will be able to designate the amount of intervention based on the percentage of students not showing progress — even if it's only the first year of the district not meeting AYP.
''We can designate a district in need of high support right off the bat and get them that support early,'' said Ohio Department of Education spokesman Scott Blake.
Last August, three-fourths of the Akron-Canton area's school districts failed to meet the tough requirement of adequate yearly progress on the state's annual report cards.
Forty-seven area districts missed the federal threshold, up four from the previous year. Of Ohio's more than 600 public school districts, 62.4 percent didn't make AYP — up from 60.6 percent the year before.
Districts must show improvement among all students and several subgroups, such as low-income students and minorities.
Most local districts that missed AYP last year did so because they failed to sufficiently improve the test results among special-education students. Akron, Barberton, Cuyahoga Falls, Brunswick and Streetsboro missed AYP for a fourth year in a row last year and undertook measures to improve.
The state's new flexibility doesn't change how students are measured and it won't trigger any new federal or state money, Blake said. But it will allow the state to identify problems with sophisticated data analysis and intervene sooner.
''A lot of these are tools that are already in place,'' Blake said. ''It's not like we're creating a new program.''
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John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
The federal government is cutting Ohio and five other states some slack in how they reach the goals of the No Child Left Behind law.
Get the full article here.
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