The Washington Post is the latest to point out that states are hiding “persistently dangerous schools” by not reporting them as required under NCLB. My colleague, Erik Robelen, first noted this four years ago.
By focusing on the small number of schools being identified as “persistently dangerous,” the Post story overlooked substantive recommendations from the Department of Education’s inspector general in this report. To fix the problem, the IG recommends the following:
“1) All violent incidents, according to state code, are factored into the [persistently dangerous schools] determination, without the use of disciplinary action qualifiers;
“2) Benchmarks for determining [persistently dangerous schools] are set at reasonable levels that are supported by objective and reliable data; and
“3) [Persistently dangerous schools] are identified based upon the most current year of data.”
If Congress doesn’t act on NCLB soon, would the Bush administration add these changes to the list of regulatory changes they’ll be making?
P.S. I thank the Post‘s headline writers for putting “‘No Child’ Data on Violence Skewed” on top of this story. This blog is no longer the winner of eduwonk‘s “most obvious headline ever.”
