children left behind

[sisyphusshrugged]

A school board in Florida, bellwether state of Our Fearless Leader's No Child Left Behind policy, is changing the rules to block student transfers to better schools. School choice was a major selling point of Our Fearless Leader's policy for education.

Well, at least they still have access to adequate funding federal support for remediation parents with jobs sharply higher costs and arbitrary, unmeetable standards.

The Broward school district's student-reassignment policy is likely to become more restrictive.

The School Board on Tuesday discussed eliminating transfers during the second semester, as well as shrinking the time frame for applications during the summer. The other possible change would end all parental appeals at the ''hardship committee'' -- meaning the board would no longer be a last-ditch option for desperate parents.

The recommendations were approved at Tuesday's workshop, but that decision isn't final. The board is scheduled to take the first of two formal votes at next Tuesday's board meeting.

''This is being done to stabilize these school's populations,'' said Harry LaCava, the North Central Area Superintendent. ``A big reason is the class-size amendment.''

After voters approved an amendment to the state constitution two years ago mandating smaller classes, the school district began clamping down on its widely used reassignment policy. It wanted students to return to their home schools, which were sometimes under-enrolled.

POPULAR SCHOOLS

School district officials say many popular schools were flooded with transfers, including Cooper City High -- an A-rated school -- which recently had more than 500 out-of-boundary students.

Today, a transfer application to a critically overcrowded school -- one whose enrollment is greater than 120 percent of capacity -- will likely be denied. A parent can then appeal to a hardship committee of school district staff, and a last and final appeal can be made to the board. But board members are leaning toward taking themselves out of the process by ending it with the committee.

The current window for transfer applications opens May 1 and lasts until five weeks before the start of school. This summer, that was mid-July.

Under the new plan, the window would be May 1 to June 15.

Comments

[drownedinink.livejournal.com]

Oh, the school board I cover for my job has only one school of each 'level,' so it has to turn to surrounding counties for 'school choice.' Problem is, they already asked the nearby school systems if they could take in their students whose parents request the service, and all six of them refused.

I got the feeling this wasn't an isolated case.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure it isn't.

Problem is that this unavailable service is the only recourse most parents have.

[misanthropoid.livejournal.com]

I do not like No Child Left Behind because it sets the standard so pathetically low and imposes this ugly and artificial uniformity nationwide.

I am more disturbed though, at the fact that districts allowed open enrollment to drive them to 120% of capacity. I'm sorry but full is full and this sort of poor management simply guarantees that the good schools' effectiveness will drop. It's a balancing act.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

You know, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the way the plan is structured, failing schools are penalized financially and made more likely to fail, and the only recourse the parents in them have is to transfer the kids out to another school.

Close that option off and kids in failing schools are trapped in failing schools that keep bleeding money as long as they're failing.

[misanthropoid.livejournal.com]

It's that life-support attitude toward keeping buildings open that I blame for a fair share of the problem. If a school is not performing I say shut it down and warm up the busses. If the federal funding goes away any school is immediately a non-viable entity.

I realize that this runs counter to my overcrowding statement but I never claimed to be free from contradiction.

Any school can succeed. Every school will not.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

So how far do you want to carry the "warm up the busses" approach?
Closing the school will not solve the problem (I figure it would only lower the bar at the so-called "good schools".
The problem needs to be fixed, but not I think, by closing failing schools.

[misanthropoid.livejournal.com]

Your second line is right in line with the inconsistancy in my own position to which I referred. I don't want to overstuff the currently successful schools and drag them down. Still, every district in my area is a consolidated district as economics have determined that "one town/one school" was no longer feasible. Under the current federal constraints any consistently under-performing school is likewise going to be a drain on the system. That's why I say close them. Prepare though, by writing into contract language that staff and administrators of non-performing schools that are closed are not guaranteed placement in remaining locations.

I want people to take some ownership. In my opinion that requires the threat of some genuine inconvenience.

By the way I am in no way anti-public schools. I let my teaching license expire just three months ago and I was in the classroom in the early nineties and again as recently as 2002. I did once purchase a house in Newport (the South Washington County school district) when Saint Paul schools were struggling but have never given private schools so much as a second glance.