A sweeping new federal education law has Maryland educators scrambling to meet deadlines, notify parents and offer services many never dreamed would be among their responsibilities.
Buried in 1,200 pages of the No Child Left Behind Act are startling new obligations: Parents in poverty-stricken schools must be informed if their children lack "highly qualified" teachers. Tutoring and other services must be available to children in failing schools. Parents in "persistently dangerous" schools must be told their kids can transfer to safer grounds.
And lack of capacity no longer will be an acceptable excuse for a school district's failure to offer transfers to children languishing in failure.
Who says? The U.S. Department of Education, which Tuesday, nearly 11 months after President Bush signed the law, issued final regulations.
State and local educators had hoped the final rules would allow some leeway in the implementation of the first major overhaul of American schools in 37 years. But Eugene W. Hickok, undersecretary of education, made it clear that states and school districts would be held to the numerous deadlines in the act.
"Watch us. We're going to get pretty aggressive," Hickok said.
The school choice provisions are only part of the law, described as a "nightmare" by state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. "The intent of the law is the right one," she added quickly, "but we've been working 17-hour days to try to implement it correctly. The reporting requirements alone are staggering."
A $4.3 million cut in her headquarters' budget, with seven months left in the fiscal year, has made matters worse, Grasmick said.
About $400 million in federal aid to Maryland is at stake, although federal officials have made it clear there are sanctions available - including the forced reorganization of failing schools - before federal funds would be cut off.
To meet the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind, Maryland has been forced to scrap its 10-year-old test, the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, and purchase a commercial test that will yield individual student results. Grasmick said the state is on target with the new test, to be given statewide in March.
Other requirements
But the test is only the beginning. Other requirements have had Maryland school officials rushing to comply for most of a year.
Using test data, the state must establish a "baseline" and then assure that all groups - including those in special education and those with limited English proficiency - make "adequate yearly progress" until they reach proficiency in reading and mathematics in a dozen years.
Each state sets its proficiency level and "adequate yearly progress" definition, and Secretary of Education Rod Paige has warned states not to set the bar low so they can show progress more easily.
This fall, districts must allow students in failing schools to transfer to better public schools. Hickok said compliance with this provision has been spotty across the nation - Baltimore, for example, found seats for 194 of 30,000 eligible children - but Hickok said the law will be enforced. Schools "are going to have to build capacity" to accommodate future transfers, he warned.
Next fall, students in schools with high suspension, expulsion and crime rates can transfer to safer schools. Maryland districts await word from the state on the definition of "persistently dangerous."
Beginning this fall, newly hired teachers at high-poverty Title I schools - there are 100 in Baltimore - must be "highly qualified," and all Title I teachers must meet that standard by 2005-2006. Parents must be informed if their children are taught for four weeks or more by unqualified instructors.
The definition of "highly qualified" is one of the sticky points in the new law, said Lawrence E. Leak, in charge of teacher certification for the State Department of Education. Generally, a qualified teacher is certified, has passed state tests and is trained in a "content area" - English, history and the like. This excludes provisional teachers - comprising about a quarter of Baltimore's staff - and those teaching outside their content area. It means hundreds of Maryland middle school teachers in basic subjects such as writing and history are technically unqualified because they're certified in elementary education.
Reporting unqualified instructors to parents presents a public relations problem, said Synthia Shilling, an attorney for Anne Arundel County schools. "It's an awful situation to put a teacher in," she said, "because she might actually be an excellent teacher, and you don't want to chase her out of the system. So we met with the affected teachers first and then drafted a letter that explained what it means to be highly qualified. Then we listed the qualifications each one of the teachers does have."
Carrying out a law without knowing its final rules and regulations "is like throwing a dart at a board before you know where the bull's eye is," said Shilling. Mary E. Yakimowski, Baltimore City's chief of accountability, used another analogy. "It's like having everything needed to build a house - the windows and doors and so on - but not having a blueprint to build it," she said.
Schools with a three-year record of failure - 63 qualify in Baltimore - must inform parents that their children are eligible for free "supplemental services" such as after-school tutoring. In a rigorous bidding process, state officials chose New Jersey-based Huntington Learning Center and Baltimore-based Sylvan Learning Systems, both for-profit firms, to provide the services.
'A part of the culture'
Hickok denied that the tutoring and student transfer provisions of No Child Left Behind are harbingers of a voucher scheme sought by the Bush administration but rejected in the bipartisan drafting of the bill. But school choice and supplemental services "should become a part of the culture of American education," he said.
Despite uncertainty, confusion over definitions and piles of paperwork, Grasmick and others praised the new law for its focus on accountability. Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston said the goals of the act are similar to those of his 2-year-old Blueprint for Progress. Betty Morgan, schools chief in Washington County, said No Child Left Behind "will be worth it in the long run, although right now it's imposing a heavy financial burden."
'A great irony'
And Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said most of the complaints he has heard have come from the wealthy suburbs. "It's a great irony," he said, "that while the big cities have most of the headaches with this law, and while the big cities have achievement levels low enough that they ought to be the focus, it's the suburbs that are whining loudest. Go figure."