************************ From the Hartford Courant, Wednesday, September 8, 2004.
See http://www.ctnow.com/news/education/hc-confusion0908.artsep08,1,78427 13.story?coll=hc-headlines-education
************************ `No Child' Act Leaves Parents Confused City Educators Worried About Misconceptions
By Rachel Gottlieb
When President Bush called his school reform plan the No Child Left Behind Act, some parents got the wrong idea.
Could it mean that children shouldn't be left alone after school, as one Hartford parent thought on the opening day of classes Tuesday?
Or does it mean that schools are not allowed to hold children back a grade even if they fail their classes, as several other Hartford parents thought?
Guesses about the law's meaning by parents streaming home after early morning ceremonies in Hartford Tuesday shocked principals and top officials grappling with the most extensive federal education law in the past quarter century.
The federal act, signed by Bush in January 2002, expands testing programs and imposes sanctions on schools whose students do not meet state standards in reading and mathematics. The purpose of the law is to close the achievement gap that finds some groups of children - such as minorities, special education students and children from low-income families - lagging behind others.
As straightforward as the law may seem, parents in Hartford and across the nation find it confusing.
A 2004 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll found that more people reported familiarity with the law than in last year's survey, but that 68 percent of all respondents and 62 percent of public school parents still said they knew "very little or nothing at all."
Worse than knowing little, though, random parents in the city's North, South and West ends thought they did understand the law, and believed it ensured that students would be promoted from grade to grade regardless of their attendance or academic performance.
Standing outside Simpson-Waverly Elementary School in the North End - the city's blue ribbon school that opened for the first time Tuesday as a magnet school and with a new principal - parent Tamatha Washington ranted about the law.
"It's the worst thing that could have happened to these schools," Washington said with urgency. "All summer long, I was hearing from kids that they don't have to go to school because there's No Child Left Behind. They figure the law's going to protect them."
"It's just the opposite," said Italia Negroni, the district's senior director for No Child Left Behind. "Everyone has to meet certain criteria or else."
Misconceptions about the law in communities such as Hartford concern educators because poor cities have more at stake under No Child Left Behind.
The majority of schools in Hartford, for example, have been placed on the state's warning list and will face sanctions if student test scores do not rise.
City parents also may be unaware that in some cases under the law they can demand tutoring or transfers for their children, so some students may be missing a chance to get extra help.
The misunderstandings are as varied as the city's residents are diverse.
Pausing outside McDonough Elementary School in the South End, parent Nancy Martinez was stumped. She guessed that the law prohibited leaving children alone on the street. Harold Crosley, a father at the same school initially proffered a similar guess, saying that it meant "you should not leave the kid behind after school."
But Crosley went home to check with his wife, Carol Davis, about the law and returned to the school feeling enlightened. "It means if the kids are not doing well, they have to go to summer school because the schools are not allowed to hold them back," Crosley said. "She said they could not hold them back at all."
Unfortunately, he was still wrong.
McDonough parent Kim Tucker, who knows the law because her daughter was retained this year, said she hears "They can't retain my child" all the time in her South End neighborhood. "Most parents think it's a push to get them through the grades. It's a push to get them up to grade."
Mothers registering their youngsters at Noah Webster Elementary School in the West End said the same thing.
The federal law doesn't specifically require the retention of low-performing students. But state law does require that students in the most troubled districts attend summer school or stay back if they score in the lowest level on the Connecticut Mastery Test and don't significantly improve those scores by the end of the school year.
Webster's principal, Freeman Burr, said the misunderstanding could undermine teachers and principals who are trying to convey the importance of students coming to school every day and keeping up with their peers.
"They might not see the urgency if they think No Child Left Behind means the kids won't stay back anyway," Burr said. "It's a grave concern."
While principals and top officials were surprised by the parents' misinterpretation, the thinking has been percolating for some time. Herb Knight, a teacher at Fox Middle School, said he heard it for the first time last spring, when a couple of his students mentioned the law in their defense when he told them they were failing and would have to stay back.
They said the law protected them from retention. "I did not think they were serious," Knight said. "I thought it was some new thing they'd come up with to get out of being failed."
What shocked Knight was the revelation that parents around the city think the same thing. He said he would address the misunderstanding at the school's open house.
Negroni said the district has concentrated its efforts to explain the law to parents at the three schools facing immediate sanctions under the law. But as the state releases updated lists - with the list of high schools coming out today - all but a couple of the city's schools are expected to face sanctions eventually.
As those new lists come out, Hartford parents, like those around the nation, probably will be confused.
"I don't think they know enough about it," said Vincent Ferrandino, executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals in Alexandria, Va., speaking about people throughout the nation.
"There are some people who [mistakenly] think it gives them total power to go into schools and do what they want. There are others who think it's only a testing law," he said. "I think parents are getting their information second- and third-hand."
Robert Henry, Hartford's superintendent of schools, said officials have toiled to try to explain the law to parents and around the city. He says many parents do understand it but he still plans to redouble efforts to educate parents.
"It points out there's a gap in the understanding of what the law means," Henry said.
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More information about No Child Left Behind is available on the U.S. Department of Education's website at www.ed.gov/nclb
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Courant Staff Writer Robert A. Frahm contributed to this story.
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A discussion of this story with Courant Staff Writer Rachel Gottlieb is scheduled to be shown on New England Cable News each hour today between 9 a.m. and noon.
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-- Jerry P. Becker
Curriculum & Instruction
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-4610
Phone: (618) 453-4241 [O]
(618) 457-8903 [H]
Fax: (618) 453-4244
E-mail: jbecker@siu.edu