Closing the Achievement Gap

The state of NCLB--success or failure? A Chicago charter school makes great strides: Grades, profile on the rise. Tribune:

Alain Locke is only one of six schools in the country to be highlighted by the U.S. Department of Education in "K-8 Charter Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap." [snip]

Department of Education Assistant Deputy Secretary Virginia Gentles, who will visit Tuesday, said Alain Locke was picked out of 187 charter schools in the country because of its success in providing the accountability central to the federal No Child Left Behind law.

She also applauded the school's effort to reach out to the families of its pupils. The school, at 3141 West Jackson Blvd., requires families to sign a contract guaranteeing students will do their homework and adhere to other academic requirements.

"The school has high expectations for the children and the parents are committing to those high expectations as well," said Gentles.

Alain Locke Principal Lennie Jones said that since 1999, when it became one of the first charter schools in the city, the focus has been on increasing student literacy and discipline and developing high academic goals.

Full report here. There are problems with accountability in NCLB, noted here by George Will:

NCLB's crucial provisions concern testing to measure yearly progress toward the goal of "universal proficiency" in math and reading by 2014. This goal is America's version of Soviet grain quotas, solemnly avowed but not seriously constraining. Most states retain the low standards they had before; some have defined proficiency down.

Illinois is one. But I still think the idea of national standards is a good one, even if state and local schools try to evade them. As Will also points out, NCLB forces schools to pay attention to students near the proficiency minimum--special needs students (despite abuses) and underachievers, yes even in the suburbs, a group that should get more attention. It also puts pressure on schools to explain their achievement gaps, fair or not, and puts the spotlight on states which have dumbed down their tests.

And while I, as most Republicans do, think local government is best as it is closest to the people, public education is so corrupted by the domination of the teachers' unions that it is untouched by reform in most locales. So I do think NCLB was a step in the right direction, but its future is murky, especially under a Dem administration that will still be obsessed with the last civil rights cause, (and blind to its failings) not the current one.

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