Middle-class blues
A new federal education law is finding failing schools in a surprising place: the suburbs
HOPKINS, MINN.--"We're live," yells Eli, a lanky sixth grader with a striking case of bed head who serves as the digital cameraman for Eisenhower Elementary School's weekly TV broadcast. Lexi, 11, begins reading the school news, leading with the science fair to be held in the cafeteria that night. Next, a fifth grader who serves as the school weatherman launches into a discussion of how mountains of melting snow will affect neighborhood septic systems.
The student news report--beamed directly into every homeroom and later broadcast on the local public-access TV station--is a fixture at Eisenhower and at every elementary school in the Hopkins district. And it is just one sign among many of the 8,300-student school system's innovation and educational quality. The affluent suburb west of Minneapolis is home to the 2001 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and boasts four schools that have won the sought-after U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon award. Hopkins High School (which has both a cross-country and a downhill ski team) is tied with two other schools for the highest number of National Merit Scholar semifinalists in the state. "It's one of the best districts in the metro area," said Kevin Luker, who teaches in a nearby district, as he picked up his two children from school on a recent afternoon.
Bad grades. But in the next few months, as the provisions of a new federal education law kick in, many Hopkins schools may get a new label: failing. The district expects six of its seven elementary schools to be so named under the No Child Left Behind Act championed by President Bush and signed into law last year. The legislation requires states to test all pupils in grades three to eight and to identify schools as "in need of improvement" if students in certain subgroups (racial minority, economic level, English fluency, and special education) do not either reach minimum standards or show improvement over time. And Hopkins is not alone. While most state accountability plans are still awaiting Department of Education approval, Susan Sclafani, counselor to the secretary of education, expects that "thousands of suburban schools will be labeled" as underperforming. That means not only public embarrassment but also a range of potential sanctions, including school restructuring or even state takeover.
While states have long targeted low-performing urban schools for improvement, suburban schools with high overall test scores and pockets of racial and economic diversity are only now coming under the reform microscope. And the early readings in many cases are not impressive. At Eisenhower, above-average test scores mask some troubling disparities between the school's middle-class majority and a growing minority of low-income kids. Only 28 percent of Eisenhower's 25 low-income third graders passed last year's state reading test, for instance, compared with 76 percent of the third grade's 86 nonpoverty students. Similarly large achievement gaps haunt many suburban schools nationwide. At Highland Park High School outside Chicago, for example, 82 percent of white students met the state math standards last year, compared with just 5 percent of Hispanic pupils.
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