COMMENTARY

August 29, 2003

Bergeson refuses to disclose "On Alert" schools

Lynn Harsh | Evergreen Freedom Foundation
In a report released yesterday, Chief School Superintendent Terry Bergeson announced that 1,172 Washington state schools made adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), while 436 failed to achieve the standards.

Fifty of the 436 schools have been on the "failure" list for two years or more operating under various levels of sanctions. Thirteen of the 50 schools listed as "failing" last year moved off the list this year. This leaves 386 schools with an "On Alert" designation.

We thought it would be useful to analyze what the thirteen schools did to get off the list and apply those lessons to the 386 schools listed as "On Alert." But the OSPI refuses to even make, much less release, a list identifying the 386 schools.

On Thursday morning, Bergeson’s staff told EFF’s Bob Williams that they would try to get the list to us in the afternoon. Today, Friday, the OSPI made a firm statement to Bob that Bergeson was not planning to put it together since the NCLB Act did not require her to do so, and that if she did assemble it, she would have to release it to the public.

Yes, and that’s a problem because...?

OSPI staff said if we want the information we will have to compile it ourselves by looking at the scores from every school in the state.

O.K., we’ll do that. But why such obstinate and unnecessary behavior from the OSPI? Originally we were told the list would be released on Sunday, which just happens to be in the middle of the Labor Day weekend and past the day most papers will have written about this story.

This attitude is frustrating, but consistent with past performance where public statements from the OSPI trumpet the need for all of us to work together for a breakthrough, while privately they circle the bureaucracy’s wagons tighter.

We are sympathetic with many of Superintendent Bergeson’s concerns with the No Child Left Behind Act, but this behavior is counterproductive. It has nothing to do with what’s good for kids and everything to do with OSPI’s public relations concerns.

The No Child Left Behind Act is the law now, and if my child was attending a school listed as "On Alert," I would want to know what problems had been identified and how my children’s school was planning to address them.

Note: We have been studying the No Child Left Behind Act for several months and will release an electronic version of the first of several reports on NCLB on September 5, 2003.

Lynn Harsh is Executive Director and Senior Education Analyst for the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a free-market public policy research organization.

Contact: Lynn Harsh | Senior Education Analyst | 360.956.3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org