Walt Blomberg - Woodburn Superintendent

IN MY OPINION ~ Walt Blomberg
Tuesday, March 22, 2005

In the eye of the storm of school reform

Silence. Can you hear it? It is the eerie silence you hear before the
storm.

President Bush's No Child Left Behind law is resting in that silence
now. But don't let it be confused with peace -- although resting in
peace six feet under is where I would prefer it be -- or acceptance. No,
the storm is just on the horizon now as districts across the state are
beginning to be singled out by the federal government for not meeting
adequate yearly progress.

If you look closely, there are a few dark clouds already forming. They
are hanging over the heads of about 15 districts throughout Oregon.
Haven't heard the rumblings yet? Well, listen carefully, for these are
the "quiet" districts, the districts of diversity with large numbers of
poor, minority and limited English-proficient students.

Visit my district, the Woodburn School District, where the dark cloud
of sanctions hangs like a shroud over us. We may not be shouting from
the rooftops yet, but I definitely feel a storm inside my gut every time
I think about the injustices of No Child Left Behind.

I have no trouble being accountable for our students' learning, but
student learning is not what No Child Left Behind measures. The biggest
failing of the law is that it relies on a state testing system that does
not measure student progress. It does not care what prior knowledge or
skills a child brings to school, but only whether he or she meets a set
standard.

Secondly, the law does not care whether a student can speak English.
Every student, regardless of English proficiency, must take the test. To
make matters worse, these students are then judged to be failures if
they do not meet the same grade-level standard as the average
English-only student within one year of entering our country.

Do you think it is surprising that the Woodburn School District is
struggling to demonstrate competence on such narrow-sighted measures? We
have the largest percentage of poor students (87 percent), the largest
percentage of minority students (82 percent) and the largest percentage
of students with limited English proficiency (65 percent) of any other
district in Oregon.

Instead of being judged on the quality of our instruction or the
quality of our programs -- or, for heaven's sake, the amount our
students learn while in our schools -- we are labeled "unsatisfactory"
and cast into the "needs improvement" pile like so much dirty laundry.

No Child Left Behind cannot imagine for a moment a 9-year-old from
Mexico who has never attended school and speaks absolutely no English
and very little Spanish. His primary language is trique , a Spanish
dialect spoken in Southern Mexico. The federal law cannot imagine this
student, but I can. He is one of hundreds who enter our district each
and every year. They are not all without education or without a strong
native language, but most often they come without English. Guess how
they score on the English reading and writing tests?

Ah, but the tempest will not begin and end in Woodburn or the other 15
districts at the front of the line. No Child Left Behind will soon
capture the attention of other districts as it ratchets up the standards
and unleashes a maelstrom of sanctions that include firing staff,
tossing the administration, dissolving the board or eliminating all
local control.

Will you let those happen to your district or will you be part of the
storm that's brewing out there on the horizon?

In Woodburn, we can already feel the wind picking up.

Walt Blomberg is superintendent of the Woodburn School District.