Hundreds of schools have failed to make adequate progress for five years in a row under No Child Left Behind. So what happens next? Not much, reports the New York Times. In theory, schools that haven’t improved on their own are supposed to be changed by “firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance.”
Yet so far, education experts say they are unaware of a single state that has taken over a failing school in response to the law. Instead, most allow school districts to seek other ways to improve.
. . . “They’re so busy fighting No Child Left Behind,†said Mary Johnson, president of Parent U-Turn, a civic group. “If they would use some of that energy to implement the law, we would go farther.â€
State education officials don’t really know how to improve very bad schools. New York City, Los Angeles and other districts are breaking up some large, chronically low-performing schools into smaller schools. That seems to be the solution du jour.
schools have closed in the Denver school system for academic reasons, sometimes more than once:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5421568?source=rss?source=sb-reddit
a high school closed for a year for restructure, to put a multiple small school high-school back to a unified large one (thereby gaining a jump on the larger school districts to get on the next bandwagon)
I am not sure these qualify as NCLB closings under the standards of the NYTimes, or if indeed Denver qualifies as part of the US under those standards.
Annapolis High in Annapolis, Maryland was taken over by the state last year. The entire staff-admin and teachers-were fired. Most teachers did not reapply for their jobs and were placed in other schools. Admin completely replaced.
Results for this year? Pitiful. Even worse.
Look at Nashville — while schools have not closed, the State has taken over one (replaced a principal that had been brought in two years earlier to improve the school). The state is actively involved in 13 other schools and is breathing down the district’s neck as it is a failing district.
Strange, the biggest miss is with special ed and ELL students. Only a couple of schools have missed in math for all demographic sub-groups. Those schools will be taken over next year — meaning the full administrative staff will be replaced — unless they improve on their scores. Seeing how Tennessee’s minimum for proficient jumps up this year those schools will not make it.