another example of NCLB logic

I've recently worked with a team of teachers to design an appropriate academic program for a very young five year old whose lowest score in a battery of intelligence tests was the 98th percentile. He is attending reading and math lessons in a second grade class, but his motor skills are age-appropriate. That is, his mind works at lightning speed, but he can't write down letters and numbers fast enough to perform at the second grade level.

His parents are looking at another district school, which (supposedly) specializes in serving the gifted population. (I have my doubts that the staff there is any better trained in working with this population than the staff at my school, and I resent the fact that the school board chose to build a brand new building for gifted students while failing to provide adequate facilities, teachers, teacher training and needed hardware and software to meet the needs of special needs students on the OTHER end of the scale, but that is another post...)

I do not blame these parents for assuming that a magnet program would be best for their child. For all I know, it WOULD be better for him. When my own son Andy was in kindergarten, he was in a private program, and when it was time for him to start first grade, we did not send him to the neighborhood school.

My school is a school that struggles to close achievement gaps. We have an enormous population of second language learners, a fairly high transiency rate, and we are in a neighborhood impacted by poverty. (Ironically, our enrollment is going UP, because nobody in our neighborhood owns homes, so the mortgage crisis is driving people INTO our enrollment area.) Our school also houses a district program that serves district children with significant cognitive and emotional impairments.

The NCLB (No Child Left Behind) provides for increasingly severe financial and administrative sanctions when schools do not increase their achievement scores by certain percentage points. Almost every child is tested, including those children I just mentioned, and including children who have been learning English for one year.

The achievement scores for the learning disabled children, who are bused in from around the district, apply to our school.

The achievement scores for gifted children who are bused AWAY from their homeschools around the district to attend a center-based program take their scores with them.

Needless to say, and completely aside from the fact that the "gifted" school has a pretty spotty record when it comes to adhering to admission standards, it makes it very hard for me to recommend the magnet program for gifted children. The law is pitting schools within the same district against each other.