No Child Left Behind Act progress report shows schools lagging
By Lindsay Tice
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – Auburn has two schools on the list

SAD 15 in Gray and SAD 52 Turner each have two.

Lewiston has three.

In all, 144 Maine schools – or 21 percent – have made a state monitoring list because their students failed to make the progress required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

And many school and state officials aren’t happy about it.

Said Lewiston Superintendent Leon Levesque. “It has nothing to do with quality of education.”

The state also released several lists of schools that have improved reading and math scores four out of the last five years and schools that have consistently performed well. There were eight schools from this area on those lists.

There were 29 ways that schools could end up on the monitoring list. They made it if their students did not perform well enough on the reading or math section of last year’s Maine Educational Assessment, an annual statewide standardized test given to kids in grades four, eight and 11. They also made the list if fewer than 95 percent of their kids took and finished the test. Elementary schools were listed if they had poor average daily attendance. High schools were listed if they had a poor graduation rate.

Schools also made the list if any single group of students, including special education students and English as a Second Language students, performed poorly on the MEA, didn’t take the test, didn’t attend school or had a low graduation rate.

The Maine Department of Education notified 190 schools about their place on the list earlier this month. More than 180 appealed the decision, saying the state had incorrect information, wrong test scores or bad data. The list was eventually narrowed to 144 and released during a press conference in Augusta Friday.

Twenty-seven schools from this region were listed, including schools in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties.

Levesque said he had a half dozen employees working for days trying to verify the state’s information about his schools. Among other issues, they found some students were registered twice while others had missing scores.

Despite that, Lewiston High School, Lewiston Middle School and Montello Elementary School remained on the list. All three had performance and participation problems, mostly with small groups of students.

“It’s a stressful time for schools and teachers,” said Levesque, who believes that his school system is so large that it will always have at least one group failing to meet standards.

“It’s inevitable,” he said. “We’re always going to be on this list.”

SAD 72 Superintendent George Cunningham said his Molly Ockett Middle School in Fryeburg made the list because special education students didn’t meet the standards. But schoolwide scores were above the state average over two years.

“It’s a rather bizarre situation,” he said.

At Mountain Valley High School in Rumford, Principal Bruce Lindberg said his school was listed because only 93 percent of 11th-graders took the test last spring. For his small high school, he said, five students make the difference.

But Lindberg didn’t take issue with the participation requirement or his school’s place on the list.

“It keeps schools trying to do their best. We will work harder,” he said. “We must look at the overall criteria and we meet that criteria for a good school.”

Other officials weren’t so accepting.

State Rep. Edward D. Finch, a Democrat from Fairfield, said the list inaccurately portrayed 20 percent of Maine schools as failures just because Maine has high standards.

“This is a false picture,” he said.

Members of the Senate Democratic Caucus also criticized the list Friday, pointing out that Maine consistently scores in the top 10 on national tests.

“This situation we are facing now clearly shows how inappropriate No Child Left Behind is for states like Maine,” said State Rep. Michael Brennan, a Democrat from Portland. “Maine has led the country in establishing standards and holding high expectations for its schools through initiatives such as learning results. Several reports have shown Maine’s K-12 system to be one of the best in the country and this mandated rating by the federal government has dragged us into an unproductive discussion regarding ‘failing schools.'”

The No Child Left Behind Act, a controversial education reform law, requires states to release the names of schools that don’t make adequate yearly progress for two years or more. That list, also released Friday, was smaller because schools were not judged on the progress of small groups two years ago. That list included 10 schools. None from this region were named.

Although the state didn’t have to name schools that hadn’t made adequate progress for one year, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said the state decided to release the longer list to give schools an early opportunity to improve.

“We want to know what’s happening in our schools,” said Gendron. “It’s good communication. It’s good planning.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

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