NCLB replacement looks good for area schools

SANDERS COUNTY – In late December, the No Child Left Behind Act was officially replaced with a new law; how this new law will effect the Sanders County schools, though, has yet to be seen.

No Child Left Behind has been replaced with the Every Student Succeeds Act. The biggest changes under the new law is that school funding and control has been put into the hands of the state governments, rather than the federal.

“Basically, what it is, is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” said Thom Chisholm, superintendent of the Plains schools, noting it just required there be education standards in place.

According to Chisholm, the changes within the Plains schools should be minor. He noted they had already been operating at or above the expected levels when the common core was brought out as part of NCLB.

He also noted that when the schools were told to switch over to new testing systems under NCLB, the Plains schools did not encounter many issues. This was because they had already laid groundwork for such testing systems. One of the changes was doing computer-based assessments, which Plains had already been working with at the time.

“We already have them,” Chisholm said. “And we’re already so far ahead of that anyway, we’re just going to bring the kids in and test them like we have for the last 30 years.”

The issue with NCLB is that it is very difficult for someone in Washington D.C. to know what students in Montana need and what problems they may be having. As a result, trying to legislate educational standards on the national level is very challenging.

Under the ESSA, the individual states will create their own accountability plans and methods to reach the standards; what those will be for Montana is still unknown, but more information will be released as it comes from Helena. However, due to the legislative cycle, this new plan is not expected to go into effect until the 2017-18 school year.

NCLB was very controversial since it brought so many changes to testing and put so much focus on the results for a teacher’s performance and school’s funding. Chisholm recalled schools were “constantly barraged” with unrealistic developments and expectations on the teachers.

The benchmarks from NCLB were very difficult for schools to meet; with each student learning at a different pace or having a different learning style, having each student reach 100 percent proficiency in a topic was not realistic.

“We couldn’t expect every student to reach 100 percent proficiency, especially when you add in all incredibly large variables,” Chisholm said.

Josh Patterson, superintendent of the Noxon schools, also noted it was difficult for the Sanders County schools to compete with others for funding, teachers and supplies. With a high impoverished student rate and very rural setting, the area gets overlooked a lot; low enrollment numbers can also sway the direction of test results.

A side effect of this is that, when it comes time for the standardized tests, smaller population schools have a disadvantage in their results. The smaller test pool meant that one or two kids doing poorly have a big impact on the school reaching the goal.

“It’s just not going to happen, when you have a class size of 19 kids,” Patterson said of reaching the goals.

Chisholm believes the new system will allow the schools to go back to teaching under the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math protocols. These are considered the subjects needed to make a well-rounded citizen. Under NCLB, schools focused on all of the subjects but arts.

Patterson said the new program is a step in the right direction for bringing American education back to a strong level. He also felt just about anything would be a better program than NCLB.

“I think we’re going forward with this and it’s going to be great,” Chisholm said.