Madison schools failing to meet No Child Left Behind standards
The Madison Metropolitan School District is one of four school districts in Wisconsin failing to meet standards set under the federal No Child Left Behind act.
Superintendent Art Rainwater told The Capital Times the list is "ludicrous," the district doesn't pay attention to it, and the district will do what's best for the students and not gear curriculum to meet the criteria set by the federal government.
"As we've said from the day this law was passed, it is only a matter of time before every school in America is on the list," Rainwater said. "It's a law that impossible to meet, because eventually if every single student in a school isn't successful, you are on the list."
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released the list of schools and districts not meeting at least one of the four federal standards Tuesday.
According to the Adequate Yearly Progress Review Summary, nine of the Madison district's 52 schools and alternative programs were listed as missing objectives.
The whole district is on the list for failing to meet the reading objective standard.
The four objectives are test participation, mathematics, reading and other academic indicators.
In Madison, LaFollette High School and Sherman Middle School each missed two of the four objectives, both failing to meet the reading and math standards, according to the summary.
Other Madison public schools failing to meet the standards included West High School (reading), East High School (reading), Memorial High School (math), Cherokee Heights Middle School (reading), Toki Middle School (reading), Leopold Elementary School (reading) and Lincoln Elementary School (reading).
The two elementary schools were the first ever on the list for the Madison district.
East and Memorial showed improvement from last year's report, when East failed to meet standards in reading and math and Memorial in test participation and reading.
Rainwater said sub-groups within schools, such as students with English as a second language or students in special education programs, can give a school a failing grade in an objective if the students in the sub-group don't make adequate progress.
"It's usually a single group that puts a school on the list," he said. "To say a whole school or even an entire district isn't making progress because of one small sub-group summarizes what this law is."
Rainwater said the district will do what's best for students and not focus on the four No Child Left Behind Act standards.
"We've never narrowed our curriculum down to test for what the law says," Rainwater said. "We will do what is best for our kids and I feel we've done a good job."
The Milwaukee public school district was the worst in the state in meeting the standards, with 82 of the 156 schools on the list coming from Milwaukee.
File photo
Outgoing Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater says the district doesn't follow No Child Left Behind guidelines.
