Myth: “A school deemed as failing by federal officials must administer extra tests, file more reports, and ultimately runs the risk of losing federal funds.”

-- Reported on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, April 19, 2005.


It’s hard to unpack everything that’s wrong in that one little sentence, but to begin with, schools identified as “in need of improvement,” do not have to administer extra tests and—if their districts are doing what they should with federal funds—should receive more money, not less. Not until a school has been identified as “needs improvement” (nowhere in the law are schools identified as “failing”) for four years is there a provision for a school to be reconstituted in some way—but that still doesn’t mean a loss of federal funds. Depending on what the problem is, that could mean a new principal, new teaching staff, a new instructional design, or some other solution.

The myth that “federal officials” determine whether a school should be designated as needing improvement is very widespread. However, that determination is made by how well the school does in meeting standards set by the states according to the states’ own tests and accountability system. True, that state system has to be approved by the feds (for example, the feds make sure all students are properly assessed and important subgroups like poor and minority children are included), but state systems vary quite widely and reflect each state’s own decisions about what it means for students to be “proficient” in reading and math.

NCLB says that the states have to have standards and a system for making sure that students are provided with the way to meet those standards, but the federal government has not set those standards nor have they decided what tests to use – the states have done that.

Let’s remember that the purpose of standards and tests is to identify whether children are learning what they need to learn and if they need extra help.

Bonus MythBuster: In that same Morning Edition report, the state superintendent of Utah, Patty Harrington, was allowed to state, unchallenged: “About half of our schools are now identified as in need of improvement under No Child Left Behind.”

We can only count 67 out of Utah’s 803 schools that are reported as “needing improvement,” which is closer to 8 percent than 50. Utah does not make it easy for parents and the public to find this information, but if half the schools are in need of improvement, that has not been reported officially to the people of Utah.