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Military access—‘Opt out’ vs. ‘opt in’
School districts receiving NCLB money are required to give student information to military recruiters. But parents and students can “opt out” by asking that their personal information not be released. To help them, Portland, Maine, schools added this option to student emergency forms. Of the 1,341 students at Deering High School this year, 698 chose not to release their information.
Last year’s NEA Representative Assembly voted to propose that the law be changed from “opt out” to “opt in”: No contact information would be released without student or parent approval. NEA is supporting a bill in Congress, H.R. 559, to make that change.
Schools have an incentive to push out low-scoring students
Reports say that some schools, desperate to make AYP, are pushing low-scoring students out. One example: An Orlando, Florida, newspaper discovered that 126 low-scorers were dropped from the rolls of a local high school in 2003, just before the state test.
“That coincidence was unexplainable,” says David DeMond, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association. “It was an embarrassment.” The principal denied dismissing students to boost scores, but after the bad publicity, she was reassigned.
“That practice is severely monitored to be sure it does not happen again,” DeMond says.
Teacher Quality: No Child Left Behind provides funding to help teachers learn to be better teachers.
According to AERA's news release, Bruce Fuller, lead author and professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that the strong advances in narrowing racial and income-based achievement gaps seen ...