School system works to meet standards of President’s program
Editor’s note: The following is the second in a two-part series exploring the No Child Left Behind Act and its implications for the Warren County School System.
Over the past year, Warren County Schools officials have been working diligently to ensure the local school system will be in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act, the most sweeping federal education reforms in nearly 40 years.
“We started working on it as soon as the legislation came out and we continue to do so as more state and federal guidelines are released. We’re pretty well prepared,” said school system director of instruction Bobby Cox.
Signed into law by President Bush last year, the No Child Left Behind Act is meant to increase education quality for all American students, especially those who are oftentimes “left behind,” including students disadvantaged by race or socio-economic status.
Key components of the legislation include provisions for annual testing, academic improvement and improved teacher quality. Specific goal-setting and implementation of the program will be left primarily to the states.
As Tennessee already has an annual testing program in place in its TCAP and Gateway tests, Cox said the local No Child Left Behind focus is on academic improvement and teacher quality.
To show the necessary academic improvement, he said, the school system will be required to make “adequate yearly progress,” in which it must increase its test scores incrementally over the next 12 years until all students are deemed “proficient” in reading and math assessments. Baseline data on which to measure yearly progress will be taken from this year’s TCAP and Gateway tests.
No Child Left Behind also requires all county teachers to be “highly qualified” by 2005. No longer, Cox said, will a K-8 certification be enough to teach elementary school, as teachers will have to be certified in their subject areas taught (math, social studies, etc.) or otherwise show they have subject mastery.
Similarly, high school teachers will no longer be allowed to teach up to two classes a year for which they are not certified (example: a teacher certified in English will no longer be able to teach two sections, or classes of biology).
Right now, Cox said, the highly qualified teacher provision is not a dire concern to the system, though difficulties could arise when it must fill vacancies which require hard to find certifications.
“We may have to recruit in colleges as we want to attract the best teachers,” he said. “Our biggest concerns with No Child Left Behind are test scores and personnel issues, but basically we just want to make sure a plan is in place to meet the needs of our students. That’s our number one goal. If we can do that, and adjust as the state says, we’ll be in good shape and be sure to leave no child behind,” he said.