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| Cabrillo faces uncertain future By Lewis Rutherfurd--[ lewis@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 2:53 PM PDT The Cabrillo Unified District is on the brink of a new identity. Part of that shift is a natural progression, as longtime superintendent John Bayless, prepares to retire and Cunha Intermediate School gets a major overhaul. But the district is also heading into murkier waters - it is sinking farther into bureaucratic disrepute as failure to reach federal benchmarks leads to failing grades for local schools, and white flight poses challenges for both education and funding. Cunha Intermediate School is entering its fourth year of "program improvement" status under the federal No Child Left Behind school performance standards and could now be subject to measures as draconian as closure or replacement of the entire staff. Meanwhile, Hatch Elementary School enters Year 3 and Farallone View Elementary School is in its first year. The district as a whole enters program improvement this year as well and will be audited as part of that process. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's wonderful," said Elizabeth Shuck, the Cabrillo assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. "But we need to look at our successes and work on the sub groups." The "sub groups" are the rub for California schools that have fallen into program improvement. English language learners, the economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities are the three identified groups that have been given strict improvement targets under testing and accountability programs at both the state and federal levels. At Cabrillo, English learners and the economically disadvantaged blend together as a single subgroup. "There's about 90 percent correlation," said Shuck. And as a revenue limit district - one that gets money based on the number of students and not an overall package of general aid - Cabrillo is caught between stark numerical testing targets and an equally uncompromising shift in demographics. The district gets almost $4,000 less per student than basic aid districts in the county with similar demographics and is locked into No Child Left Behind's guidelines along with most California systems. Test scores for white students are generally above target levels throughout the state - and at Cabrillo they are higher than average - Hispanic students and English learners test lower in all California districts. These blunt statistical assessments do not bode well for future success at Cabrillo, in either pulling affected schools out of the program improvement spiral, or keeping the rest of the district fully funded. "It's my impression, and it seems to be fact, that we're losing white kids, not just gaining Hispanics," Jolanda Schreurs, a Cabrillo governing board member, said at a meeting earlier this month. There are statistics to back up that claim. Mike Bachicha, the Cabrillo director of categorical programs, said that the district had lost 282 white students from total enrollment rolls over the last four years and gained 109 Hispanics. He cautioned that the numbers were from raw statistics and that the story behind each move - and the proficiency and economic status of the students involved - can't be seen in the raw data. English learners have grown much more slowly as a group in the same period, for example. But the overall shift is clear. Cabrillo was 65 percent white in 2001 with a total enrollment of 3,753, according to district figures. In 2007, the district is 46 percent white and 44 percent Hispanic, with an enrollment of 3,337 students as of Sept. 6. The federal testing and accountability program has succeeded in providing more raw data that highlight persistent achievement gaps. It also forces schools to focus on lower achieving groups, pluses that even some frequent critics of the system, like Cabrillo Superintendent John Bayless, acknowledge. But criticism of the federal initiative is widespread. And some experts say the program's entire approach is badly out of balance. "It's certainly the case that more and more schools are falling into program improvement," said Edward Haertel, a professor of education at Stanford University and an expert in educational testing and assessment. Haertel's current research involves responses in classrooms with differing resources to the pressures of external accountability testing. He noted that California has had its own system, the Academic Performance Index, in place since 1999. "The API is truly a growth system; it worked well," Haertel said of the index that tracks progress within schools relative to previous years. NCLB ushered in the Adequate Yearly Progress standard in 2000. It requires schools to hit ever-increasing targets for students testing at grade level. By 2014 the law requires that 100 percent of students test at grade level in reading and math. It further addresses all subgroups that have a significant presence at a school to increase their scores to meet the same mark. But this seemingly simple calculus controls program improvement designation and may miss a school that is improving at a steady rate. "AYP is not really a progress indicator," said Haertel. "They are uniform targets that all the schools have to reach, and there's progress only in the sense that the targets rise over time." Testing and compiling a record of achievement is one thing, but there are other aspects of the system that worry Haertel. "I make a conceptual distinction between the testing system and the accountability system that rests on top of the testing system," Haertel said. "The problem is that the accountability system is part of a reform strategy." It is a strategy out of balance, he added. "The system creates the impression that teachers and students are just not working hard enough - and can just be brow-beaten or shamed into doing better," Haertel said. "The stick is the shaming and the threat of takeover. You don't get higher performance just by insisting on it." The upshot is an approach that pulls too many schools into the deep waters of program improvement, which includes informing parents of a school's status, paying for transfers and shifting funds to teacher training, without regard to which ones really need the lifeline. "It's a lack of attention to the ways in which schools improve," said Haertel. "I think that the accountability system is unduly harsh. It sweeps up too many schools, and, as a result, it's not useful for targeting resources to schools most in need." Haertel said he didn't think that schools in program improvement status were necessarily failing or poorly run. He pointed to some basic problems in logic that make it impossible for schools with a significant percentage of English learners to reach final goals. "For a student who is not a native speaker, every test becomes a test of language ability - whether intended or not," said Haertel. "There's a lack of validity in testing students in English who don't speak it well." As students become proficient they are taken off the rolls of language learners and counted in a different group. But more English learners continue to swell the ranks. Modifications to the law have addressed part of this Catch-22, but any district with a steady growth of English learners is still doomed to fall into program improvement, he added. But despite these flaws, Haertel said he believes NCLB will be re-authorized before the 2008 presidential election. "If you look closely at what has happened with NCLB, it has changed a lot," he said. "Small changes, but they have softened the impact of the law." These changes include highlighting students who have become proficient in English while at school and margin-of-error adjustments to allow some improving schools to avoid failing. "If it becomes completely untenable, people will find ways to make it work," Haertel predicted. "Over time, the cumulative effect is that far fewer schools will fall into program improvement." In the meantime, Cabrillo officials are taking what steps they can. And they bristle at low scores for students with disabilities that have added to the district's falling status. "This is a group of students that were excluded from the high school exit exam until this year," said Shuck. "They haven't met their goals because their specific learning disabilities do not allow them to take the curriculum they get tested on. They take the same tests as an (advanced placement) student." But they acknowledge that while the district is not entirely to blame for the current bind, it is not just a question of unfair standards either, "It's somewhere in the middle," said Melissa Rey, executive director of the Cabrillo Education Foundation. Rey is working to raise an endowment for the district in the hopes that more money can boost programs. "Everybody's below the goal," she said of scores for disabled students in particular. "We are ahead of the state average." As part of program improvement, classes in math and English have been added for low-scoring students, both in place of electives at Cunha and before regular hours begin. And groups of district teachers have been visiting schools with similar demographics in the region that have done better. One school in Hanford is about 90 percent English learners, said Shuck. "We went to find out what they were doing," said Shuck. "They had focused reading and writing programs; it was literacy, literacy, literacy for them." But Cabrillo has a more diverse mix, and no one has found a perfect formula yet. "We want both groups achieving - and they are - but it's a parallel line," said Shuck. "They want us to boost the English learners into a hyper improvement to close the gap." |