BAY MILLS — Acting Deputy Secretary of Education Dr. Eugene Hickok visited Bay Mills Indian Community on Tuesday, April 6, to participate in the Bay Mills Community College Charter School Leadership Meeting.
The visit provided an opportunity to educate BMCC, area school and charter school leaders from around the state of Michigan on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, as well as the Education Department's stance on charter schools. The discussion, held at Bay Mills Resort and Casino's Horizons Conference Center, was attended by representatives from BMCC, Lake Superior State University, Mosaica Education and various chartered schools and management companies. Also attending were Bay Mills Tribal Chairman Jeff Parker, Vice Chairman Allyn Cameron, the Bay Mills History Department and County Commissioner Dick Timmer.
Hickok began the session with an example of a mother so frustrated by her local school system she moved her family across the state because she heard a charter school would be opening.
Charter schools are aimed at helping students who are most at-risk for being left behind and serve the most-challenged populations with students who have not benefitted as much as they should have from traditional schools, Hickok said. They are not the enemy of public schools that some people have made them out to be.
The deputy secretary continued, saying that America is the wealthiest nation in the world and leads the world in health and science, but that education is far behind.
“We're not where we should have been by now,” he said.
The Department of Education believes in the potential of every individual, but children, through no fault of their own, are being written off because of the color of their skin, the depth of their pockets or the language they speak.
“It's got to stop,” he said, by supporting charter schools and creating schools, using No Child Left Behind legislation, that are worthy of such a great nation.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the bipartisan landmark education reform law designed to change the culture of America's schools by closing the achievement gap, offering more flexibility, giving parents more options and teaching students based on what works.
The purpose behind NCLB is to make sure the focus remains on the students, according to Hickok. The law makes it so that states can no longer close their eyes to problems, he said, because NCLB holds schools accountable for the success or failure of their students.
All schools now receive a report card and must achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on state proficiency tests. According to a NCLB fact sheet (www.ed.gov), schools that fail to make AYP for two consecutive years are identified as “needing improvement” and are required to offer public school choice to all students in the failing school and provide transportation to the new school. Those who fail to make AYP for three years must provide Title I funding for supplemental programs for low-achieving disadvantaged students. Four years of failing AYP mean schools are subjected to increasingly tough corrective actions and could ultimately face restructuring.
Conversely, schools that meet or exceed AYP objectives are eligible for State Academic Achievement Awards.
Schools have already benefitted from the more stringent accountability standards, Hickok said, citing an example of a school with high average test scores that spent about $14,000 per year per student and had world class facilities. Though they consistently received the highest test scores in the state, they failed to make AYP because their African American students' test scores did not improve. NCLB helped the school uncover the problem to turn things around and improve the lives of those students.
Hickok gave an example of another school with a very low income and a large Hispanic community that consistently did poorly on state proficiency tests. The school recognized the need to improve and is now one of the highest-performing schools in the district.
In New Mexico, The Associated Press reported that four schools primarily serving Native American students have gone from the “lowest of the low” to now meeting standards.
These examples are “living proof” that NCLB works, Hickok said.
NCLB has drawn criticism as a “one size fits all law,” but Hickok said this is not true. Eighty-five percent of NCLB mandates are determined by the state, he said, including flexibility provisions, proficiency tests and “highly-qualified” teacher standards. The federal government doesn't tell the state what to do, but makes it impossible for the state to ignore problems, he said.
Some states have lower standards than others, he said. Schools that pass under one's states standards would fail under another's. Under Arkansas standards, none of their schools needed improvement while Washington, D.C.'s schools, known as the worst in the nation, named only three schools that needed improvement. This is very unrealistic, Hickok said.
During a question-and-answer session, Brimley Area School Superintendent Alan Kantola asked if national curriculum or national testing are planned, “so we're all playing on the same field.”
Hickok said that education will always remain a state and local issue, but he foresees the gradual nationalization of standards by the states, themselves. It will have the same effect of national standards without national standards, he said.
Hickok was presented with a gift of maple syrup to thank him for visiting Bay Mills.
