Important Date Nears for Failing Schools, Efforts at Reform

Time is running out, Education Department officials say, for the states to turn around about 8,000 of the nation’s worst-performing schools in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

Federal reforms require that, during the academic year beginning this fall, states must force drastic measures on schools that are chronically failing to teach low-income students--steps that could include firing all the administrators and staff, or sending students to other public schools that are making better progress.

The deadline marks a moment of truth for the states, the federal government and the entire academic-standards movement: Is the nation truly serious about creating a public education system that teaches all children, regardless of economic background, to master specific skills in each grade?

Plenty of Difficult Obstacles Exist

Only a handful of states have prodded exam scores upward in the six years since President Clinton pushed the reforms through Congress. The new federal approach gave states freedom to decide what students should be taught--but it also required proof, through testing, that the students actually are learning the state-mandated material.

“You can’t leave kids in a failing school for long periods,” said Marshall S. Smith, who recently left his post as acting deputy Education secretary to return to Stanford University’s education school as a professor. “There’s a general feeling that we need to move quickly.”

There are plenty of formidable obstacles to Clinton’s approach, including a shortage of qualified teachers and political concerns magnified in an election year. And many people question whether the Education Department has the resolve to enforce its own reforms.

“We’re real serious about this stuff,” said Mike Cohen, assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education. He added, with a sigh: “I don’t kid myself into thinking this is going to be easy.”

Congress did not specify a penalty for states that do not institute reforms at failing schools, so the Education Department came up with one: They risk losing a total of $80 million under Title I, the nation’s largest education grant program.

Title I, born of the 1960s Great Society, is meant to help close the learning gap between students from poor families and those from more affluent backgrounds. The lack of headway made by the program since the mid-1980s, despite a budget now totaling nearly $8 billion a year, was a prime reason for the education overhaul.

Technically, Cohen said, the federal government could cut off all Title I money if a state does not uphold its part of the bargain.

But several in the administration agreed that they want to minimize the direct effect on poor kids while, in the words of one White House aide, “hitting the governors where they live” at the state level.

So, Cohen said, a state that refuses to carry out federal orders will lose Title I administrative funds. Although the amount represents a tiny slice--at most 1%--of a state’s Title I money, state education officials said they are concerned that withdrawal could slow teacher hiring and lead to larger class sizes. They also said it would severely damage state guidance for struggling schools, leading to more outright failures.

Fear of bad publicity, federal officials expect, will be an even greater motivator for states to crack down and avoid federal penalties.

The required remedies, of course, could cause considerable disruption. Sending children from failing schools to other public institutions could cause overcrowding. Firing an entire staff may mean some rough transitions, especially since replacements are hard to find.

The Los Angeles Unified School District hopes to satisfy the federal requirements with “a kinder, gentler process” at its 167 failing schools, said Margaret Jones, director of specially funded programs. The district plans to ask its board for the right to make decisions that normally would be school-based at more than 140 campuses next year, and it also may reassign some principals and teachers.

Federal law allows local districts to run failing schools from the central office, but superintendents generally don’t have enough resources.

The states have known about the deadline for six years, Smith noted, and a few have succeeded in raising test scores. He praised North Carolina and Texas--whose governor, George W. Bush, is running as an education reformer for the Republican presidential nomination.

A study released in January by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which advocates higher standards and more parental choice, described California as combining strong state standards with enforcement procedures. Even so, California needs to speed up its efforts if it is to comply with federal law, said Hanna L. Walker, the state’s assistant superintendent and Title I coordinator.

California does not require state intervention at individual schools until 2002, while the federal law demands action in the 2000-01 academic year. State education staffers have been meeting to resolve the issue.

“Clearly, we understand we need to do something sooner,” Walker said. “I know we have to do something serious in the fall of this year, but I don’t know exactly what that something is.”

Between 300 and 500 California schools are not meeting academic goals, she said, but exact numbers won’t be available until late March.

In Maryland, the state school board voted this month to take three elementary schools from the Baltimore district. Test scores showed that fewer than 10% of students met the state’s standards, even though the state had provided them with consultants and an extra $200,000 annually since 1994. Maryland is looking for private contractors to start running the schools in July, with authority to hire new teachers and staff.

Still, 93 Maryland schools remain on a state-compiled list of takeover candidates. Only one school has improved enough to get off that list since 1994.

“I can’t conceive of our taking over 93 schools,” said Maryland assistant superintendent Ron Peiffer. “It’s going to be a lot of work to do these three.”

To some Education Department critics, punishment of laggard states would be a welcome surprise.

“I’m going to stand up in front of the department and cheer if it happens,” said Phyllis McClure, a Title I expert. McClure helped write a 1999 report berating the Clinton administration for “a massive failure of will and nerve” for approving vague, weak state standards. The report was published by the bipartisan Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights.

‘A Poor Record of Following Through’

Rebecca Campoverde, spokeswoman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, reacted similarly. The money at stake “can add up to a good chunk of change,” she said, but “the department has a very poor record of following through.”

Conceded Cohen: “There have been times when we could have been tougher. If I were out there, I’d be skeptical too.”

But, he added, “the skeptics are going to have to watch how we handle it.”

Politics will intrude, Smith predicted. “If a Democratic [Education] secretary were to go after a Republican state as the first one, that could make a difference. Of course, most states have Republican governors.”

Some credit the presidential campaign for the new hard line. “I didn’t hear any of this until Bush gave his second speech on education,” McClure said.

The presidential contenders in both major political parties seem to have lost patience with America’s educational system and have offered even more radical fixes--including public school choice and vouchers good for tuition at private or parochial schools.

Cohen, however, rejected the notion that politics is forcing the Education Department to act. He pointed out that Clinton said in his 1999 State of the Union address--well before the candidates declared--that “all states and school districts must turn around their worst-performing schools or shut them down.”