Put meaning back in measurement of schools

Across Illinois, 80 percent of all school districts are said to be “failing” to meet basic standards in reading, math and science. In Northwest Cook County, every single high school is a “failure.” Across all the suburbs in the Daily Herald circulation area, seven, just seven, made adequate yearly progress to avoid the repercussions of failing two years in a row; dozens more fell onto the list of schools or districts in danger of facing sanctions. This should be cause for alarm, no?

Well, actually, no. Here’s the blunt assessment of the principal of “failing” Wheeling High School, Laz Lopez: “That label has absolutely no value in the community. It’s meaningless.”

That word appears again and again when you talk to educators about the results of annual school report cards which, under the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation are supposed to be putting our schools on the track to universal excellence. “When (almost) every school is labeled as failing, the evaluations become” -- here it comes -- “meaningless.” says Steve Cordogan, the director of research and evaluation for Northwest Suburban High School District 214.

So, the question has to become, as critics have been asking Congress practically from the beginning of the NCLB process, how much longer will we put our schools, our students, our parents and our communities through this?

The admirable goal of NCLB is to have every school in America declared successful at meeting basic standards by 2014. In fact, by that year, it’s a virtual guarantee that every school in America will be declared failing. The reason is a system of measurement that applies equally to all students and that annually raises the bar for passing until 2014, when every school and every student in America is expected to meet the basic standards.

Nothing about that goal is inherently inappropriate. We absolutely should be striving for a system that ensures every one of its products meets basic requirements for academic success.

But every child in America is not alike. Every child in the suburbs is not alike. Shoot, every child in any neighborhood in any one of our suburbs is not alike. So, we have set up a system that will ensure they all fail equally — or, more likely, that we all will simply come to identify as meaningless.

In what appears, intentionally or otherwise, to be the effective dismantling of NCLB, federal regulators have begun considering waivers. Illinois, wisely, has applied for one, aiming instead for so-called “common core” standards that use various measures including tests, college preparation courses and career preparation to determine the relative success of a given school.

That approach, advocated by Naperville Unit District 203 and other suburban schools, seems eminently more valuable and sustainable. With the ultimate “failure” of all schools under the current system evident to anyone who can, yes, do basic math, one wonders why federal authorities aren’t hastening toward it more rapidly.