President’s education plan shouldn’t affect Oak Park
By Michael Picarella
Acorn Staff Writer

President George W. Bush signed his education bill last week. It will leave "no child left behind," Bush said, and Oak Park officials said it shouldn’t affect their operations. Bush wants to close the education gap between rich and poor, and white and minority students, and raise teacher standards.

The new law will require that all students, as well as English-as-a-second language students, be reading by third-grade. Annual exams in reading and mathematics will be given to every child from grades three to eight beginning in the 2005-06 school year.

Oak Park already tests every single grade level, according to Oak Hills Elementary School Principal Tony Knight.

The new law also states that public schools that fail to improve scores two years in a row could receive more federal aid. If scores still fail to improve, low-income students could receive tutoring or transportation to another public school. If schools don’t improve scores after six years, they’ll be re-staffed. Schools will be expected to develop annual report cards that show a favorable comparison of their standardized test scores vs. other local and state schools.

Oak Park should do well, Knight said. Trends of scores in Oak Park Unified School District prove it.

A possible threat to local schools might be reduced federal financial support. But according to Knight, "The federal government really has very little to with education anyway. People don’t really realize that, but there’s very little federal dollars that go to education, and they have absolutely zero to say in terms of program," he said.

After four years on the job, Bush’s law will require that teachers have met requirements to teach their subjects. In Oak Park, Knight said, "We already do that. And in California you can only get an emergency credential for a very short period of time ... In our elementary schools, we don’t have anybody on an emergency credential," he said.

The current Blue Ribbon program, which has benefited all three local districts in the past, will be changed to the "No Child Left Behind" program. The focus will be on standardized test scores and will likely reward and recognize schools that improved the most.

Oak Park schools can’t improve by much because their scores are already high.

"The current Blue Ribbon program as it exists is all encompassing," Knight said. "It’s very complete and by changing it to a "No Child Left Behind" program is a redundancy.

"The way the current program is," Knight said, "they really look at every aspect of a school’s program and not just the test scores. Student achievement is just integral to that whole thing. If you only looked at student achievement and test scores, then I think you’re at greater risk of leaving people behind—children and everyone else," he said.

Bush’s new law, especially the "No Kids Left Behind" program, focuses primarily on low performing schools.

"I think the attention should go like it is right now (in the Blue Ribbon program)," Knight said. "When we were in Washington (for the Blue Ribbon awards this last year) and we were watching the schools being recognized, there was such a mix of urban schools, suburban schools, rural schools, parochial schools and all different types of schools who are serving all different types of the American population and yet all being held to the same standard.

"I think that’s a big mistake to focus all this attention on one type of school," Knight said.

"This is such a giant leap forward," said Secretary of Educaiton Rod Paige of Bush’s new law. "It is actually a cultural shift, a different way of doing business. It goes further than anything in the past in terms of demanding accountability from states, school districts, individual schools and individual teachers and principals. No longer can they hide, no longer can their results be hidden."

Oak Park officials said they have nothing to hide.

Oak Hills’ Tony Knight was the only principal in Oak Park to answer repeated requests for a response regarding Bush’s education bill. The other principals didn’t return phone calls.