The size of special education programs, and other factors, must be considered when grading schools.

So, my little community school is on the list of “Schools failing to make adequate progress” (21 percent not making grade, Oct. 25). I predicted this, but not for the reasons that the No Child Left Behind Act invites citizens and leaders to assume.

Prior to Sept. 25 of this year, I had defined a critical philosophy on the state of U.S. public education. I likened it to a manufacturing plant for young people, taking “raw materials” and running them through a stepped series of essentially equal treatments and inspections, and popping out high school graduates like finished product. This human manufacturing system, I reasoned, ineffectively responds to individual learning needs.

I have been substitute teaching in Greene Central School for the past month, mostly in special education classrooms. In this short time, I have experienced some revelations that challenged elements of my education philosophy. I also learned some details that are not reflected in the “results” shown through standardized testing:

1. Teachers at all levels are indeed trying to simultaneously provide stimulating and comprehensive instruction to wildly differing learning styles among their students. Those who need extra help outside of “mainstream” curriculum due to various challenges use resource rooms with one-on-one teacher assistance. Their proficiency expectations are adjusted according to their ability, providing layers of the same instruction versus identical treatment.

2. There are wildly differing ratios of special education students from school to school. Greene Central School has three resource rooms that are devoted to an average of 16 students, among a student body of 400 (based on 2002 Maine K-12 School Profiles). I hypothesized that Greene is serving, at an enormous per capita expense, a much larger ration of special education students as opposed to, for example, Cape Elizabeth.

My research supported my assumptions. Based on Maine Department of Education data, approximately 10.45 percent of SAD 52 K-6 students are placed in resource rooms, as opposed to Cape Elizabeth’s approximate 0.65 percent placement.

3. In a Sept. 24 “Talkback Live” session on Education Week, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige asserted that at least 95 percent of students, regardless of their learning challenges, must take the same assessments as the rest of the district student body. The results of these tests could be affecting the overall score averaging, as there is no provision to allow reporting according to learning ability.

The average expenditure per student is similar: $5,094.33 for K-8 in Greene, and $5,307.31 in Cape Elizabeth, whose mill rate is 0.42 less than Greene’s.

Funding per student is not disproportional; one large difference appears to regard costly special education program membership, and hints at the reason for variances in test scores.

These differences can affect a school’s ability to develop and manage alternate instructional and testing methods, such as producing a multimedia presentation versus a written essay to answer an assessment question. Thus, a larger portion of learning disabled children may be forced to take mainstream standardized tests, the results of which may affect overall scoring averages.

While more research is needed to create a more complete reporting of the data’s overall ramifications, my efforts left me with no trouble understanding why Greene’s MEA results are lower than some other schools.

Further, after having worked with seven different classrooms of various ages, abilities and progress, I am left with profound respect for our school’s teachers and administrators.

We must be very careful in which direction we toss the blame for these results, and what “remediation” is attempted. Regardless of the numbers, I have found no evidence that

ours is a “failing school.”

Quite the contrary.

Jennifer Kirley owns Central Maine Solutions, an organizational performance consultancy in Greene.