Schools Await Final Grade

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Twenty-Nine Days and Counting
With 29 days left until the Maryland School Assessments in reading in math, Charles Carroll Middle School is at the end of the line. But what happens next?

The challenge is to succeed where the school missed last year: mathematics test scores for disabled students and reading test scores for black, Hispanic, low-income, limited-English and disabled students. Wood needs a solid performance from teachers and students across the board. Then he has to do it all over again next year to escape the list.

With time short before next month's crucial state achievement tests, the school is cramming in reading and math. Daily loudspeaker announcements segue to funk riffs from a song called "Word Up!" and then to a review of prefixes, suffixes and other vocabulary builders.

"L-E-S-S: less," said an all-school intercom voice one recent morning. "Added to the end of 'home' means what? Without a home." A few students in one classroom listened or took notes. Others laughed or chatted, their attention elsewhere.

Schools like Charles Carroll are at the last stage of enforcement because Maryland took a more aggressive approach than many states in implementing the federal law enacted in January 2002. Essentially, Maryland merged its state accountability rules with the No Child Left Behind system. Elsewhere, watch lists have evolved more slowly. Virginia and D.C. have no schools at the end stage.

The law requires reading and math tests for all students in grades three through eight and once in high school. States must track progress toward closing achievement gaps. The goal is near-universal academic proficiency by 2014.

Schools must be tagged for improvement if they miss academic targets two years in a row. High-poverty schools that receive federal Title I funds are pushed down a five-year pathway of consequences for repeated failure. (Maryland also imposes some sanctions on schools that don't qualify for the funds; Charles Carroll Middle is one.) In the fifth year, these schools must be "restructured." That means they can be converted to public charter schools, run by a private contractor or run by the state. Or their staff can be jettisoned. Or they can undergo "any other major restructuring of the school's governance arrangement that makes fundamental reforms."

The Center on Education Policy, a Washington think tank, is studying a handful of states with schools at the last stage. California, for example, has 249. The analysts found that local officials generally shy away from the strongest sanctions, charter conversions or takeovers. Frequently, they replace staff. Many choose the most open-ended option: "other."

"All the Draconian measures don't make sense to educators when they have to deal with these problems," said Jack Jennings, president of the policy center and a former Democratic congressional aide. "They opt for what they think will work rather than something showy."

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings predicted that many more schools nationwide will face mandatory restructuring in coming years. "Having schools called out, spotlighted, attended to when they're not working, is what this law is about," she said.

In Baltimore, three struggling schools drew heightened scrutiny after Grasmick's 2000 decision to run them in a public-private partnership with Edison Schools Inc. A year ago, all three were at the last stage of the watch list. But two moved off the list with solid and sustained achievement gains. The third positioned itself to leave the list this year.

Leaders of the Edison schools, which have nonunionized teachers, said they have longer instructional days and more management flexibility than at a typical public school. But they also cite factors common to many public school reform plans.

"It takes hard work," said Edison's Zelda Holcomb. "It's focused instruction, strong principal leadership. We're always analyzing data. It's consistent and ongoing."