Test-centric NCLB pushes kids to drop out, researcher says

“It’s a perverse incentive,” said Daniel Losen, a lawyer with the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, during a lecture at the Open Society Institute.

“We have high rates of suspensions and truancy, and No Child Left Behind is exacerbating that.”

The federal act penalizes schools that fail to boost test scores with closures, state takeovers and dismissal of teachers, so principals are actually rewarded by letting troubled children drop out, said Losen, a former teacher.

Schools in Tampa, Fla., and New York even sent letters to students with poor exam scores and grades, telling them to not return to high school and instead complete a GED program.

In addition, a No Child Left Behind loophole allows schools to not count the test scores of students who have not attended the entire school year.

Misbehaving students in New York are shipped to detention schools, which are better than the streets, but still aren’t centers for learning, said Losen, who supports in-school suspensions, which keep students in-school but in a different room.

In Baltimore, the school district that suspends the most students in Maryland, schools chief Andres Alonso has called in-school suspensions a “great idea” and suggested that principals devote money in their schools’ budgets for the punishment.

With new school-based budgets, which principals began to create this week, school leaders can decide what programs best match their students’ needs. But they must boost student achievement in return.

Alonso is developing a set of accountability criteria for principals.

Schools should be measured on school climate and student attendance, and these factors should account for than 15 percent, as it is in New York, where Alonso previously worked, said Jane Sundius, education director at the Open Society.

Philanthropist George Soros founded the society to tackle urban problems.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com