Mar04SpecialReport

Testing has become a rite of passage for public school students in the United States. The No Child Left Behind Act, one of the most sweeping pieces of federal education reform legislation ever passed, requires that every state test its students in most grades in academic areas such as reading, writing, math, and science. Students must pass parts or all of these standardized exams to advance to the next grade and, ultimately, to graduate high school.

This isn’t supposed to be testing for the sake of testing alone. The idea is to help our schools do a better job of teaching our children and to help parents identify failing schools.

Whether or not you agree that tests will help to improve public education, the goals are noble. But they have no chance of being achieved until school districts or state lawmakers address a flaw in the system—the ever-earlier start of the school year.

More than a decade ago, schools started creeping away from the traditional post-Labor Day start of the school year and shifted to calendars that had classes starting in August. In Alabama last year, more than 30,000 public school students were back in class by July, while 98 percent of the state’s student population had started school by August 15.

There was little logic behind the reasons for this policy shift. The vast majority of schools didn’t add any days of instruction to the school year. They added holidays and mini-breaks, a major inconvenience for working families who must sometimes find child care or take days off work to accommodate this schedule.

Ironically, some administrators finally acknowledged that they were pushing for earlier school start dates in a misguided effort to bolster standardized test scores. They reasoned that giving teachers a head start on preparing kids for these high-stakes exams would improve test scores, but time has proven these efforts to be futile. A study by Dr. Gene V. Glass, associate dean for research in the College of Education at Arizona State University, found that school calendars have no impact on student learning or test scores. An analysis by my organization, Time to Learn, compared school start dates with test scores in Texas and Florida. We found no advantage in forcing kids back into the classroom earlier. School systems that began classes earlier one year versus the next didn't see marked improvements in passing rates. Those that started school later didn't experience radical, or even marginal, declines.

This schedule makes it impossible for states and school districts to comply with the parental notification requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Early school calendars also violate the spirit of the federal legislation, preventing teachers from using reams of test data to their advantage in tweaking and overhauling instructional curriculum.

Here’s why the early school start date doesn’t work with the No Child Left Behind Act: States must disseminate student test results to school districts in time to allow districts to share the information with parents no later than the first day of school. The goal is to give principals and teachers at each campus a chance to study the data to determine students’ strengths and weaknesses so that they can tweak or overhaul curriculum. The campus-level test data is supposed to be made available to parents in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Reports, also by the first day of school.

In extreme cases, where a campus repeatedly reports high student failure rates and doesn’t meet AYP, parents may transfer their child to a better school or, if that option isn’t available, students are to be provided with supplemental instruction and materials.

But early August school start dates make it virtually impossible for states to calculate the reams of data, put it in an understandable form, and provide it to school districts before early August. This means teachers don’t have a chance to study how their class from the previous year performed on tests to find ways to improve the delivery of their instruction before the school year begins. And they can’t study the test results of their incoming class to identify what areas need improvement.

When Kentucky schools last year announced they would be unable to say which schools and districts were failing to meet federal standards before the start of school, it drew a sharp rebuke from the U.S. Department of Education.

“They can’t postpone making” the determinations, U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Jo Ann Webb told the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader in July 2003. “Prior to the beginning of the school year is what the law requires ... to give parents time to make any decisions they need to make.”

For parents, the early school start date is a major impediment to potentially improving their child’s learning environment. If a campus in a district with an early school start date is deemed to be failing, parents don’t even have one day to research what other school might be available for a student transfer. They can’t interview teachers and principals or get an idea about a potential transfer school’s culture. By the time parents see the AYP reports and discover that their child is attending a failing campus, it may be two weeks or a month into the school year.

In other words, testing becomes something of an exercise in futility. The biggest measuring stick we have to help kids isn’t being used as intended by the No Child Left Behind Act. In this way, early school start dates are hurting our schools and helping to leave children behind.

The early school start date also handcuffs school boards. The school board is charged with studying the data that a school district receives, and it may protest potentially inaccurate data. But again, this is all supposed to happen before the school year begins.

There’s no good reason for this schedule, and some districts are now wisely abandoning it. Many of the largest school systems in Oklahoma have pushed back the start of school from mid-August to post-Labor Day. The Tulsa School District says the simple move saved the district between $300,000 and $400,000. This money is no longer spent on operations and may be available for educational services and increased teacher salaries.

The Act may force more school systems to move back to a more reasonable school start date. According to Dr. Joe Morton, Deputy Superintendent of Schools in Alabama, his state is in danger of losing millions of dollars in federal education funding if it doesn’t comply with the No Child Left Behind Act and get data to the schools before the start of the school year so it can be disseminated to parents.

It shouldn’t require a financial penalty to move schools back to a reasonable school start date. The No Child Left Behind Act is designed to give parents and teachers more information to improve the education of our children. It’s the same thing our schools should want for our kids.
Tina Bruno is executive director of Time to Learn, a national grassroots organization of parents, educators, and business leaders dedicated to fighting early school start dates and bloated school calendars. For more information, go to www.schoolyear.info.

State Education Agency Responsibilities
• Make technical assistance available, such as through school support teams, to schools identified for school improvement, corrective action, and restructuring.
• Take corrective action as the State Education Agency determines
appropriate if a district fails to carry out its responsibilities.
• Ensure assessment results are provided to a district before the beginning of the next school year and before identification of school may take place.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Student Achievement and School Accountability Conference, October 2002. www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/ayp/edlite-slide034.html.

Start Date States
States with School Start Date Legislation Proposed:
• Arizona
• Alabama
• Georgia
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania

States with Statutes Setting a Statewide School Start Date*:
• Arkansas
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Texas
• Wisconsin
• Virginia
• West Virginia

*While the above states may have statutes on the books, not all
are enforced.

For more information contact Tina Bruno, Executive Director, Time to Learn at 210/559-5277 or e-mail her at timetolearn@stic.net.