A steep grade to climb

California has more schools falling short of No Child Left Behind standards than any other state, making it a bellwether of how the federal law will play out nationwide.

More than 1,300 California schools have continued to fail to teach children and so must reinvent themselves in some way this year. Thirty-eight of them are in the Sacramento region, where educators are trying tactics big and small to raise students' scores.

Teachers at Kingswood Elementary School in Citrus Heights overhauled the school with technology, and now students take quizzes with remote controls. Will C. Wood Middle School in Sacramento created a new focus on literacy, rewarding prolific readers with pancake breakfasts and trips to amusement parks. Westfield Village Elementary in West Sacramento developed an after-school program for struggling students.

Other schools have changed principals, fired teachers or reorganized the way they cluster grade levels. Washington Unified will close its only middle school this fall because of its persistent failure to meet No Child Left Behind goals. Instead, the West Sacramento district will offer K-8 schools in each of its neighborhoods.

Schools themselves decide how to change, and many have opted to create more time for teachers to plan lessons together, hire teaching coaches or change schedules so struggling students can get extra help.

That flexibility allows some schools to do little to improve their teaching. It may be one reason so few schools make significant improvements once they're facing the law's deepest consequences.

Just 5 percent of schools that have chronically failed to meet No Child Left Behind targets manage to boost test scores enough to get out from under the law's sanctions, according to a study by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

In the Sacramento region, only 5 of 40 schools facing serious No Child Left Behind sanctions last year improved test scores enough to meet the goals of the program.

The Center on Education Policy, which has studied the law's impact nationwide, found no evidence that one type of change is any more effective than another.

"We've come to the conclusion that there is no magic bullet, there is no one thing to do that will guarantee success," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.

A staggering 23 percent of California's schools – 2,208 out of 9,674 – are failing to meet test score targets set by No Child Left Behind. More than half have reached the stage when they must reinvent themselves.

Those numbers are projected to rise steeply in the years ahead.

No Child Left Behind, signed by President Bush in 2002, is supposed to improve student performance and close achievement gaps among demographic groups. It requires that states test kids in English and math each year. The number of students scoring proficient or better is supposed to go up incrementally each year until all students are considered proficient by 2014.

For the last six years, California has raised the bar very gradually when determining how many kids have to be proficient. To reach full proficiency by 2014, though, the state will have to pick up the pace. A bigger portion of students will have to do well on the the standardized tests this spring to keep their schools ahead of the law. If they don't, even more schools will be subject to No Child Left Behind's sanctions.

At first those sanctions are mild: Schools that miss test targets two years in a row have to let students transfer to campuses with better scores and hire tutors for the ones who stay. When scores don't improve, the repercussions get more severe, requiring that schools overhaul curriculum and restructure the way they are run. California has more schools than any other state going through those changes.

That's partly because California started its testing program before No Child Left Behind became law across the nation in 2002. So schools here are rated on more years of test scores than other states. California also requires students to score higher in math or English than other states do before they are deemed "proficient."

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