Federal education standards may not be working for
the Lagunitas School District.
At a meeting of the school board this week, two of
the school board’s five trustees said that the district can’t
possibly comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As a result,
they said, the district should start planning now to opt out of the
act and its attached funding.
"It’s clear that No Child Left Behind is
a horrendous piece of legislation," trustee Richard Sloan said.
"They state a goal, and then they keep you from achieving it."
Passed in 2002, No Child Left Behind has objectives
most agree are admirable: assessing the quality of teaching in public
schools and boosting the academic performance of low-income and minority
students. It’s the means to those ends that some find repugnant:
student performance is measured through a barrage of standardized testing,
and schools that fail to meet academic targets over several years face
government takeover.
"What we’re trying to do is so much more
complex than a number derived from one test," Sloan said.
Federal act a misfit in Lagunitas
The federal legislation’s one-size-fits-all approach
does seem out of place in the Lagunitas School District, which has three
alternative schooling tracks – Open Classroom, Montessori, and
Waldorf-inspired – but no mainstream program.
In a reflection of the district’s progressive
tendencies, many parents every year exempt their children from taking
the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exams. Until
recently, the assessment tests were optional.
No Child Left Behind changed that. Students can still
decline to take the tests, but school districts with less than 95 percent
student participation are branded "non-compliant" with the
law and placed in "Program Improvement."
Lagunitas School District last year only had 70 percent
participation; the district is now in its second year of Program Improvement.
In the fifth year schools are taken over by the state.
Ditch the act, lose the funding
School districts can avoid such penalties by foregoing
the federal money attached to No Child Left Behind. That’s exactly
what trustee Stephanie O’Brien wants to do. The move would cost
the district $35,000 in Title 1 funds, O’Brien said, or about 1.5
percent of the annual budget. Other federal funding might also be affected,
though to what extent isn’t clear.
But not all the district’s trustees – or
its parents – are convinced that opting out of the legislation
right now is a good idea.
"We’re not ready to go in one direction
yet," trustee Denise Bohman said. "We haven’t talked
to the community. I’m not against fighting this all the way to
the Supreme Court – all I’m saying is that I want the community
to decide that."
Forest Knolls resident Anita Trafficante, whose daughter
is in the district’s Open Classroom Program, echoed Bohman’s
concern.
"As a parent body, we have not yet had an opportunity
to get together and talk about this," she said.
Trustees this week resolved to schedule information
meetings on No Child Left Behind for parents before moving forward.
O’Brien said after the meeting that with future
sanctions looming, some decisions will need to be made soon.
"The idea is to get the dialogue moving,"
she said. "The hammer is going to come down on us a heck of a lot
faster than people realize."