By FULLER ROYAL
Staff Writer

The No Child Left Behind merry-go-round continues.

Last week, the Columbus County Schools found itself with only five of its 19 schools making Adequate Yearly Progress.

It was in good company. The majority of school systems in the state also saw most of their schools failing to make AYP.

APY is the minimum requirement of the federal government’s No Child Left Behind program. A certain percentage of students must be proficient in reading and math.

That percentage is raised every three years with the ultimate goal being 100 percent proficiency in reading and math among all students in all grade levels by 2013.

The next school year will see that percentage raised again. Many local and state educators believe that more than 90 percent of the state’s schools will fail to make AYP next year.

And it could be just a few students in many of the schools that keep AYP from happening.

Each school as a whole is measured and then nine other subgroups are measured.

A school that overall is 95 percent proficient in math and reading could be considered a failure because eight or nine or even one student in a subgroup failed to earn proficiency in either reading or math or both.

Subgroups include black, white, Hispanic, limited English proficiency or learning disabled.

We cannot hold teachers and schools accountable until we make parent accountable.
The parents get a free ride.

We tell teachers to teach more and do a better job and then we cram their classrooms full of students who are discipline problems.

We tell teachers to teach more and do a better job and then we cram mixed classes full of students whose abilities range from being just short of academically gifted to “can’t read a lick.”

We tell teachers not to teach the test but then hold test results over their heads like a dagger.

Now, in all its continuing finite wisdom, the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE) has eliminated the vocational diploma track.

High school students are either classified as college-bound or learning disabled. No in-between.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Everybody’s going to college? Pass it down.

In order to meet the new world order of global economics, SBE believes that every student is college material and all will rise to the occasion.

All that’s going to happen is our local dropout rate will go from one-third to one-half.

A N.C. Teaching Fellows student at North Carolina State University told me two weeks ago that during a Teaching Fellows meeting in Raleigh, a speaker from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction said that with the new college track, 97 percent of all high schools students will be ready for two- or four-year schools.

Now, the pressure is beginning to manifest itself in the loss of advanced and elective courses.

We’re in real danger of losing the arts, vocation courses and specialty classes.

As the number grows of ninth graders who “can’t read a lick” or “add two-plus-two,” more and more resources will be diverted to helping them catch up.

Remediation will supplant the courses that make high school tolerable. Students who do pay attention and do their work and whose parents made sure they follow the rules will lose out because it will all be about “making AYP.”

“Sorry. There’s no band this year because too many of your classmates can’t read.”

“Sorry, there’s no theater or dance, because your classmates didn’t do any of their homework when they were in middle school.”

“Sorry, there are not as many Advanced Placement courses because your classmates spent their nights playing PlayStation II and watching Disney, HBO, MTV and BET all through middle school.”

Helping students who are behind catch up is fine – but not at the expense of those who did what they were supposed to, when they were supposed to.