As more Maryland schools last week were put on the “watch list” for failing to meet standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, a national advocate for state governments told county officials the law has been administered very unevenly across the country.

The 2002 law “has become a series of bargains and treaties with varying states,” said David Shreve, federal counsel of the National Conference of State Legislatures. The federal Education Department has granted waivers to the law based on political considerations and states that set high standards for student performance are penalized, Shreve said.

In Florida, for instance, which has high benchmarks, 71 percent of schools were not making annual yearly progress in 2006, whereas in Texas, only 9 percent of schools were not making annual progress.

In Maryland, the figure was 22 percent.

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That’s not because students in Texas are so much smarter, Shreve said.

Nebraska, was exempted from the requirement for statewide assessment tests when it refused to shift from its system of local tests, Shreve said.

“I wasn’t aware there was as much variation” in the standards that were granted, said Carroll County School Superintendent Charles Ecker, who attended the session at the Maryland Association of Counties annual meeting. Ecker noted that in Maryland it only takes a group of five children in a targeted subgroup, such as non-English speakers, to cause a school to fail.

In other states, that number is a high as 20 or 30 students in a subgroup, said Pat Foerster, education adviser to Gov. Martin O’Malley, who she said wrote the Maryland congressional delegation asking for changes in the law.

“I don’t think any educator has problem with accountability,” said Betty Weller, vice president of the state teachers union. “But it needs to be realistically applied,” recognizing that different children attain different levels at different speeds.

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com