Minority students at Oak Park and River Forest High School whose test scores suggest they could handle a more challenging course load are being moved into honors classes and given support to make it a smooth transition.
It’s one of the ways traditionally strong suburban school districts are working to close achievement gaps between groups of students, a persistent problem that is a focus of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
“It’s been a very carefully targeted reallocation of resources where there’s been the money to do that,” said Katherine Foran, a spokeswoman with Oak Park District 200. “It’s just a matter of being very creative and resourceful.”
The law holds schools accountable for the performance of subgroups, such as low-income, limited-English, minority and disabled students. If any subgroup at a school failed to meet federal standards on last year’s tests, the school was labeled as academically failing, no matter how high the school’s composite test scores were.
State data showed that 76 percent of the 1,872 schools with at least one subgroup were labeled as failing to meet standards, and only 14 percent of the 1,943 schools with no subgroups did not meet standards. A subgroup must have at least 40 students.
The numbers may shift slightly because about 450 schools statewide were granted permission to adjust data submitted for Illinois’ school report card scores.
For many suburban districts, it’s a slap in the face to be labeled failing because of small groups of students’ low scores. Some of those districts say they have been working for years to boost minority test scores in anticipation of the change.
In addition to reallocating funds, for example, Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators also have applied for grants for student outreach programs.
Students with behavioral problems meet with teachers regularly for personalized mentoring, while more gifted minority students are being challenged and supported in their transitions into tougher course loads. The high school honors program has filtered down to Oak Park middle-schoolers in District 97, where promising subgroup students are being groomed for accelerated coursework.
“These are things that we have been working on all along,” said Gail Crantz, spokeswoman for District 97.
Proponents of the federal law say that is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They say No Child Left Behind is simply pointing out inconsistencies in achievement that occur even in privileged districts and tackling the misguided assumption that subgroup students cannot improve their test scores.
“You can’t keep sweeping kids under the table,” said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington group that helps districts across the country improve achievement scores of low-income students.
“It’s easy to say, `This is unfair, you’re doing too much too fast,'” she said. “But for the kids, they’ve been waiting for years.”
As growing numbers of immigrants and middle-class minorities defect from the city to take advantage of the good schools and low crime levels offered by suburbs, some critics of the law foresee an undercurrent of resentment in communities that rely on strong schools to boost property values and that fear the new students will drag down scores.
“It has the ability of polarizing communities,” said former Chicago Board of Education President Gery Chico. “I think there’s an overall lack of compassion [by the federal government] to those issues of diversity in schools.”
`A general confusion’
For now, there is little evidence that the law has caused community division, although murmuring against new residents has been commonplace in many suburban districts.
Tom Hernandez, spokesman for St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, said the law can be confusing for parents.
“I think the average mom and dad does not have a strong grasp of the complexity of public education given their focus, which is their kid,” he said. “I think there’s a general confusion, and it’s not just in our school district.”
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Although the district’s headquarters are in St. Charles, the student body lives in several neighboring towns, including West Chicago and South Elgin. Some parents might not realize that the district’s borders do not coincide with city lines and think it is a conflict of interest for the district to worry about serving kids from other towns, Hernandez said.
“The bottom line is, it’s a school district, not a municipality,” Hernandez said. “Every child who lives in our school system has the same rights to a top-notch education.”
Officials in Wheaton Warrenville Community District 200 said they realize they must consider many factors when catering to a diverse group of students.
They have developed several programs targeted at subgroup students, including an extended school day program in which teachers customize an after-school curriculum for students who need additional help in math and reading.
Failed to meet standards
At Hubble Middle School in District 200, more than 70 percent of 8th graders met or exceeded state requirements in reading and math. But the school failed to meet federal standards because only about 20 percent of disabled students, far short of the 37 percent minimum, met math and reading requirements.
The results at Hubble are not uncommon. Of the 708 suburban schools with at least one subgroup, 74 percent did not make adequate yearly progress, while only 9 percent of the 634 schools without subgroup students did not meet standards.
“The more diverse population you have, the more variables you’re going to find students coming to you with,” said District 200 Supt. Gary Catalani. “[But] I believe that the more diversity, the stronger the school.”
Other superintendents agree that diversity is important, yet chafe under the law’s rigidity.
For instance, even though minority subgroups at Glenbard North High School in Carol Stream met state requirements in math and reading, the school still was labeled as failing because not enough low-income students were tested and because disabled students failed to meet standards.
“Kids are not widgets, and schools don’t work that way–in terms of the standardized input, output way,” said John Moss, director of student services at Glenbard District 87.
Although federal officials announced several reforms to No Child Left Behind last month that ease some of the pressure on schools to improve subgroups’ test scores, school officials who criticize the law say the adjustments do not address the bulk of the problems.
Under the changes, limited-English students would be exempt from taking the reading tests and schools would be allowed to withhold their math scores. These changes cannot be applied to other subgroup populations.
Bruce Fuller, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley who co-wrote a California study that found that schools with multiple subgroups were at a disadvantage, said the identification of subgroups is punishing traditionally strong schools across the country.
“The method is not validly identifying less-effective schools, it is penalizing schools serving more diverse children,” he said. “We shouldn’t so tightly tie these punishments to how subgroups are performing. There’s got to be a middle ground.”