Few Schools & Districts In NCLB Restructuring

Amazing to realize that so few schools and districts are in restructuring, given all the hullabaloo you hear and read:

School districts start to face sanctions under landmark law Associated Press
Nationwide, 411 school districts in 27 states now face intervention. California has 97 school districts that failed to meet their goals under the law for four years, more than twice as many failing districts as any other state so far. Kentucky has the next highest number facing sanctions, with 47.

No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite Wall Street Journal
About 1,300 schools out of 99,000 public schools were in restructuring during the 2006-2007 school year, the most recent tally. More than 400 schools have emerged from restructuring by demonstrating progress.

State eyes No Child compromise Florida Times-Union
Georgia education officials are hoping to win a spot in a pilot program that would allow the state to treat less harshly than others some school districts that fall short of federal standards.

Comments

[Robert Pondiscio]

Here's where one comes face-to-face with reality and the statistics become truly irrelevant. Students regularly transerred into my South Bronx elementary school from "failing schools" despite the fact that only about a third of our students could read at or above grade level. You would not want your child to attend my school, to be perfectly blunt. But on paper, it's making progress (five years ago, only 16% of 4th graders were on grade level) if viewed through the extremely narrow and inadequate prism of reading scores alone.

Given that backdrop, my imagination simply cannot wrap itself around what it must be like in the "so few" schools that are in restructuring.