300 `failing’ schools may have really passed

Illinois’ school report card data are so marred with errors that at least 300 schools may have been mistakenly labeled as failing under the federal No Child Left Behind law, state education officials acknowledged Tuesday.

The incorrect data have forced the Illinois State Board of Education to consider allowing individual schools to make last-minute changes to the data–10 days before the information is supposed to be made public.

State officials said more than 200 school principals and district superintendents have called the board in the last two weeks to complain about problems with the report card data, an annual accounting of how students performed on state achievement exams.

Most of the complaints stem from the erroneous identification of students’ ethnic backgrounds, income level, special education status, and English-language skills. Such inaccuracies can cause problems for schools, which must meet state goals for student achievement and test participation in each subgroup.

Schools that fail to measure up can face federal sanctions as serious as being closed.

“We are not considering a major overhaul of the report card, but we are trying to figure out what we can do to give districts the ability to make changes,” said Karen Craven, spokeswoman for the state board. “We don’t want to incorrectly label a school.”

Craven’s remarks came as small consolation to some local school officials, one of whom said correcting the mistakes is a “no brainer.”

“If I were the leader of an agency that was about to knowingly mislabel 300 schools, I certainly would think twice about it,” said Marleis Trover, superintendent of Downstate Vienna High School District 133 and president of the Illinois Association of School Administrators. “What is the point of releasing bad data?”

Craven said the 300 schools identified by the state apparently met standards for student achievement but failed to ensure that at least 95 percent of the student body–and each subgroup–took a state test as required under No Child Left Behind.

However, further analysis showed that these schools did test most of their students. They showed up as failing only because of mistakes in filling out student test booklets.

For example, the state has identified several schools where the report card shows 100 percent of students were tested. But those schools also registered less than 100 percent participation by various subgroups–an obvious inconsistency.

Such problems can arise if school officials do not ensure students are identified properly. For example, if a school says it has 100 Asian students, but only 40 identify themselves as Asian, it will appear to the state that 60 Asian students were not tested–even if all students participated.

State board officials said schools had the report card data in September and were given 45 days to correct mistakes. They also pointed out that they warned schools last year about problems with mislabeling students.

Although some superintendents continued to argue for time to fix errors, others are accepting the mistakes and moving forward.

“I think we can all agree that schools, the testing company and the state made some mistakes along the way here, so there’s enough blame to go around,” said Gary Catalani, superintendent of Wheaton Warrenville School District 200, where one school may have been incorrectly tagged as failing.

“I hope we can learn from this year and put some safeguards in place so it doesn’t happen again next year.”