AUGUSTA — According to federal No Child Left Behind rules, a third of Maine public schools are expected to be labeled as failures this year.

Maine Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen calls that nonsense.

Having 100 percent of all students be at grade level by 2014 “is a laudable goal, but we're not going to get there,” Bowen said.

On the heels of Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster's call for changes to the federal law, Bowen said he agrees and is looking into asking the federal government for a waiver.

Bowen wants to see Maine administer tests that measure individual students' progress, rather than how many students test at their grade level.

“Let us begin looking where was the student when he or she came through the door,” Bowen said. “Let's track that growth, and let's access the success of teachers and administrations based on how much growth” students had. “The big shift would be to a growth model.”

Before applying for a waiver, Bowen said he's waiting for more information and guidance from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and input from Maine educators.

If the feds say yes to a waiver, Bowen said he may ask that tests be suspended in 2012-13, giving Maine time to develop new tests the following year. Some states already have alternative tests. “We're a couple of years out before we're ready to deploy,” Bowen said.

Superintendents said they're delighted Bowen is considering a waiver.

“He understands the challenges we face in Maine and across the country in dealing with a broken federal regulation,” Webster said.

Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin agreed, saying to expect 100 percent of students all at grade level “is not reasonable, and will unfairly label schools as failing.”

Michael Cormier, superintendent for Farmington area schools, said NCLB does not make sense. “All schools will eventually be failing” when 100 percent of students will have to be at grade level.

All students learn, but not at the same level, Cormier said. “We have children with all kinds of handicapping conditions.” If they don't test at grade level “they're not failures. There are so many variables that the school cannot control.”

Grondin and Dale Douglass, executive director of the Maine School Management Association, said while there's intense interest in a waiver, cautioned it wouldn't make sense to trade in one bad set of requirements “without knowing what it is we're agreeing to.”

Enacted in 2002, No Child Left Behind was former President George W. Bush's signature initiative. The goal was to ensure that every child is doing grade-level work.

Today, educators say that isn't possible, because some children start kindergarten already behind others, some students need longer to learn, some become sick, some are immigrant students learning English.

In Lewiston, 20 percent of students are English Language Learners, mostly Somali.

This year No Child Left Behind rules say that 70 percent of a school's students must test at grade level for math, and 75 percent must test at grade level for reading. The expectations will grow each year until 2014, when 100 percent of students in all schools are to be at grade level in those areas.

Schools not reaching those levels two years in a row are deemed failing schools, or “continuous improvement priority schools.”

As expectations rise, so do the number of schools labeled failing.

Maine has 635 public schools. According to the Department of Education, last year 113 schools were labeled failing schools. This year the number of failing schools is expected to double, said Rachelle Tome, No Child Left Behind Title I Director for the Maine Department of Education.

That means some 226 schools — more than a third in Maine — will be labeled failing and saddled with a host of new requirements, including allowing parents to move their children to a school that isn't failing.

Lewiston and Auburn each have three schools on the list.

In Maine and across the country, “it's growing all the time,” Bowen said. Next year it could be that many or all high schools are considered failing, he said, calling that “nonsense. We know there's good things going on in schools.”

To read Bowen's column: http://mainedoenews.net/2011/08/09/short-term-fix/