Minnesota Moves to Exempt Itself from No Child Left Behind

On Aug. 8, 2011 Gov. Mark Dayton announced that Minnesota would seek exemption from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The announcement followed on the heels of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s notification that the federal government would begin granting waivers to states it believed were satisfactorily improving schools on their own.

Richfield Public Schools Superintendent Bob Slotterback greeted the news positively, although he didn’t yet know anything about the exemption’s details. Slotterback said the law has had problems from the start.

“Conceptually [NCLB] is a good idea, but like many concepts, if it’s not constructed in the right way, it becomes a failure,” Slotterback said. “And that’s exactly what happened with No Child Left Behind.”

Gov. Dayton’s announcement came just before the Minnesota Department of Education released scores for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) in Science on Friday.

Amongst a slew of data about student scores across the state, this year’s MCA testing in science revealed that, between 2010 and 2011, Richfield Public Schools doubled the percentage of its fifth-grade students with proficient scores on the exam.

Slotterback said inefficient means of comparing student improvement–looking at how effectively students improve in one school or district –was just one area where the law wasn't working.

“We’ve been lobbying hard as [federal legislators] re-authorize No Child Left Behind to build in some type of improvement component,” he said. “Our students ... are growing faster than the average student.”

Slotterback conceded that the law had enacted some positive changes as well.

“NCLB really pushes us to make sure that we close achievement gaps and identify groups of students that are below the level that we’d like to see them,” he said. “It forces you to look at subgroups so districts can’t hide behind averages.”

Critics have charged that NCLB was essentially set up to turn every school in the country into a failure. The law requires that by 2014 every student will pass proficiency tests in math and reading. In a statement released Aug. 8, Gov. Dayton said: “NCLB has imposed rigid testing requirements, many of which have harmed, not improved, the quality of students’ learning experiences.”

Dayton further charged that NCLB has labeled schools wrongly by using invalid statistical measures. In 2010 nearly half of Minnesota schools fell short of the law’s benchmarks; consequences for such failures range from a requirement that schools offer free tutoring to mandating they restructure.

“NCLB is designed to guarantee that 100 percent of schools in America would be viewed as below expectations,” Slotterback said. “When you say that by a certain date 100 percent of kids will be proficient, there’s not a country or state that can guarantee that.”

As reported in the Star Tribune, state officials planned on applying for an exemption by Aug. 12. Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said she hoped the exemption would take effect as early as this fall.

How the Law Will Affect Richfield

NCLB currently affects the district’s Title I grants, which assist low-income students and students who are behind for their grade.

Because the district failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in certain areas, the law requires that Richfield schools pay for supplementary education services—provided by outside tutoring agencies—to boost the achievement of underperforming students.

While it is too soon to tell what, if any, changes the state’s exemption from NCLB might have, Michael Schwartz, business manager for the district, speculated that if the requirement weren’t there, money currently used to pay outside tutoring agencies could go elsewhere.

“We provide [the names of companies who tutor kids] to the families of students, and allow them to make the choice of who they want to go to. That’s the financial obligation we have,” Schwartz said. “If we didn’t have to reserve those funds, we could probably use them to fund other after-school programs.”

Stay tuned for further news about Richfield Public Schools scores on the 2011 MCA in Science test, which is coming soon in a separate article.