A Lesson on Learning: Behind No Child Left Behind How the role of the federal government is growing in local schools How teachers are affected by the rule Schools testing burden grows No school left untouched The role of parents What's your opinion? Audio The parents' view (story audio) Hermantown parents react to NCLB guarantee that parents in schools labelled 'needs improvement' willbe allowed to send their children to a succeeding school. Hermantown Middle School teachers react to NCLB requirement of a high quality teacher in every public school classroom by 2005. Hermantown Middle School principal Ellen Wiss talks about motives of elected officials who support NCLB Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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The parents' view
by Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio
March 10, 2003

The federal No Child Left Behind act promises parents they can send their child to a successful school if their home school is failing. The provision is a major selling point of the law. However, some parents ask what will happen to the children who stay behind in schools labeled as failures? And who will pay the cost of improving their schools?

St. Paul, Minn. — Rev. Albert Gallmon understands first hand the powerful effect of educational choice. The 51-year-old pastor is a parent, a former Minneapolis school board member and president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP. He says his mother saw education as the way up and out of poverty. One day, Gallmon says, when he was a 7th grader, his mother came home after work with the news he was not getting a satisfactory education in his segregated, suburban Tampa, Florida school.

"My mother did domestic work. The individual she was working for, they had a son, he was in the same grade that I was in. And she looked at the books I was bringing home and the books he was bringing home and they did not compare," says Gallmon.

Gallmon's mother said he and his brother would be changing schools. They became the first African American students to attend a previously all-white junior high a few miles away. Nearly four decades later, Gallmon leads a civil rights organization that is bringing choice to hundreds of poor Minneapolis students. The Minneapolis NAACP's settlement with the school district is allowing four hundred students to attend better performing schools in eight suburban districts.

Gallmon supports choice, but not the version in the No Child Left Behind act. He believes it will isolate poor students of color who stay behind in the inner city schools.

When we look at graduations rates or basic skills test scores for low income kids or ethnic minorities we don't have a whole lot to brag about here. - Morgan Brown

Under No Child Left Behind a school is labeled, "needs improvement" if 95 percent of the students don't score high enough on required state tests. The law allows the students to enroll in succeeding schools in their districts.

Minnesota Children Families and Learning commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke says if second year test scores aren't high enough the school's poorest students will be eligible for tutoring.

"So that after school and before school and on Saturdays, anytime outside of the school day, these kids would get extra help. It would come from other public schools, could apply to be providers, it could be the local private schools, local churches, the Boys Club, the Girls Club, the YMCA, it could be private entities that are for-profit entities, Sylvan, Huntington, these organizations," according to Yecke.

If student test scores don't improve in subsequent years the law requires the school undergo a major reorganization, possibly a takeover by a private school.

Albert Gallmon says once parents see their child's school is labeled a failure, it'll take one, not several years for the school to close.

"The first year that that's done parents will take their kids out. They won't wait for the supplemental aid, they won't wait for the school to get better. They will seek a school where their kid, because time is valuable in the life of the education of a child. So why am I going to give you three years if you've been declared a school that's not performing. And any new parents moving into the district are not going to choose a school that's deemed not performing," Gallmon says.

He says the federal No Child Left Behind law is backed by an administration that supports vouchers which would allow tax dollars to follow students to the private or public school of their choice. Morgan Brown says the voucher charge is a red herring. Brown is a parent and a senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, the Minneapolis-based conservative research group. He says the law will help needy schools stay open.

"In states like Minnesota for too long we've kind of hidden the fact we have this achievement gap because we've averaged results and on average we do pretty well compared to other states, but when we look at graduations rates or basic skills test scores for low income kids or ethnic minorities we don't have a whole lot to brag about here. And the fact that No Child Left Behind is going to point to that means that that may be pulled out into the open so initially you may a number of schools in the needs improvement list when we start, and gradually we'll see schools come off of that as they do a better job of focusing on serving some of those students," Brown says.

No Child Left Behind advocates say the act supplies money to help school districts pay for testing, tutoring, staff development and other expenses incurred because of the law. However, Hopkins parent and school board member Barbara Klaas says the cost of bussing students from failing schools to succeeding schools is borne by the local school district. That leaves less money, she says, to improve the failing school. Her district accepts poor students from Minneapolis as part of the NAACP settlement.

She says the No Child Left Behind law puts succeeding schools like ones in her district in jeopardy because they don't have the right to limit the number of incoming students.

"It's conceivable that in two years time by having taken the neediest students from one school and transferring them to another school that other school could end up in needs improvement status, and all we're doing is shifting people around and then limiting the resources that we had to help those students to begin with," Klaas says.

The No Child Left Behind Act is tied to about $25 billion in additional federal education spending. However, the increase is small when spread across 50 states and thousands of schools that will qualify for help. Albert Gallmon says a better, but politically unpopular, remedy is to concentrate spending in schools with the poorest children.

"The conservative world is saying you're already getting more money than anyone else and you're doing a poorer job. Well, I'd say there hasn't been enough money poured into those areas especially when we look at school districts like St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth, Rochester where the diversity is increasing every year with the resources not increasing on a yearly basis," he says.

The No Child Left Behind provision allowing parents to send students to higher performing schools is already in effect in Minnesota. A state law allowing school choice called open enrollment has been on the books for years.

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