School Board Recommends Changes in 'No Child' Law

The Loudoun County School Board has approved a wish list of changes to the No Child Left Behind Act for Congress to consider when it reauthorizes the law this fall.

The board's 15-point list includes a proposal to allow English-language learners to wait three years, rather than one, before taking the same high-stakes tests as their native-speaking peers. The list also contains suggestions for less punitive ways to count student scores.

The recommendations were approved 7 to 1 at the board's Tuesday night meeting, with member Joseph M. Guzman (Sugarland Run) dissenting. Mark J. Nuzzaco (Catoctin) was absent for the vote.

"A lot of us were strong supporters of and believers in the original law when it was enacted in 2001," said board member J. Warren Geurin (Sterling). Since then, he said, he has seen some regulations "adversely impact our students in Loudoun County."

The county for the first time faced sanctions this year when Catoctin Elementary School in Leesburg failed to meet federal testing goals for the second year in a row. Parents of Catoctin students were given the option to transfer their children to another school.

Catoctin's pass rate this year for Hispanic students taking the Virginia Standards of Learning test in English did not meet the federal benchmark, according to results released last month. But the majority of the more than 30 Catoctin students who are transferring had passing scores on the test, according to Loudoun school officials.

The board recommended that the law be changed so the government can fund tutoring for low-performing students before allowing them to leave their school. The board also suggested that only students who did not pass their exams be allowed to transfer.

"This would help us preserve the community and neighborhood nature of our smaller elementary schools, where small class sizes already help our faculty to know the students and their families better," the board's proposal says.