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Of course they're not taking advantage of it. If the parents really cared, their kids wouldn't be in public schools in the first place. But heaven forbid they have to make any sacrifices for their children. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Few Exercise New Right to Leave Failing Schools August 28, 2002 By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - The education act that President Bush championed during his campaign and signed into law last January gave 3.5 million children in failing public schools the right to choose a better school this September. But with few slots available and few parents applying, education officials say that only a small number of children will benefit from the law this year. In Baltimore, of 30,000 children eligible to transfer to better schools, 347 have applied to fill 194 slots, school officials said. In Chicago, 145,000 students can theoretically leave struggling schools, but only 2,425 applied to transfer and fewer still, 1,170 students, will get to. In Los Angeles, an overcrowded system with 223,000 children in 120 failing schools, officials say there is no room in better schools for any to transfer to. The number of applicants is small, superintendents say, because parents seem to want their children close to home, in schools they already know. But also, parents have been given only a brief window in which to apply before classes begin, and because good schools draw the most applicants, they have the least slots available. Paul Houston, director of the American Association of School Administrators, said that districts have had insufficient time to carry out the new "No Child Left Behind" law, including adjusting budgets that would allow for increased enrollment in better schools. Aside from finding space, superintendents must arrange transportation for students to new schools, hire extra teachers and buy supplies on short notice. In many Southern states, administrators are struggling to comply with the new law without violating desegregation court orders, which assign students to schools on the basis of race. "The only sound I've heard lately is the creaking of people's necks as they try to figure out what to do," Dr. Houston said. "We're just getting waves of helplessness coming out, and yet, I don't hear people saying, `We're not going to obey it.' " Educators on both ends of the political spectrum complain that while the law demands that they find slots in better schools, it gives them no means to create them. It also does not spell out penalties, though states could conceivably lose their share of the federal $10.4 billion Title I allotment if they did not comply. Education advocates like Madeline Talbot, of the Chicago chapter of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, echoes the criticism from last year's debate. "This whole choice busing provision was a huge sham for cities like Chicago that have huge numbers of failing schools, and not enough places in good schools for kids to go," said Ms. Talbot, who opposes privatizing public schools and vouchers to pay for private schools. Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington group that supports vouchers, was similarly disaffected. But she blamed the sluggish local responses, not the law itself. "This has been on the radar of school districts for a long time, but districts did very little to try to prepare for the possibility that they would need to provide more public school options," Ms. Allen said. Eugene W. Hickok, the deputy secretary of education, said delays and confusion were not surprising, since President Bush signed the legislation only last January. He said the law was intended to change the culture of public education, and that transformation could take years. "We're willing to help districts, to be understanding as much as possible," he said, but he added that federal officials would not tolerate local districts "thumbing their nose" at the law. Federal officials do not have a full count of how many children have been given the option to transfer, and how many have succeeded in doing so, Mr. Hickok said. Education officials contend that the only valid reason for not letting children transfer out of a failing school is lack of space, which they define as levels that violate safety regulations. The problem of finding slots in coveted schools was raised in Congress last year. Some education advocates proposed busing children to better schools beyond their districts, an idea lawmakers rejected. The "choice" requirement is the opening salvo in the government's stepped-up battle to improve academic achievement by establishing the threat of dwindling student enrollment and eventual closure. But federal and local education officials acknowledge that the law's real strength comes from its power to expose poor performance. Under the law, schools in high-poverty areas that receive Title I funds and fail to show improvement two years in a row must offer all students the option to transfer to nonfailing schools starting this school year. If scores have not improved over three years, the district must pay for tutoring or other supplemental services. Up to 20 percent of a failing school's Title I money has to go to providing transportation to the new school, private tutoring and other services to increase achievement. In July, the Department of Education released a tally of 8,600 schools "identified for improvement," based on the test scores provided by the states. But states are still free to determine their own proficiency levels, leaving wide variations in what constitutes failure. Michigan, with rigorous standards, has 1,513 failing schools, the most in the nation, while Arkansas and Wyoming have none. The low number of parents seeking transfers reflects the different values parents use in judging schools. Some prefer to keep their children closer to home, while many weigh their own child's classroom experience over the school's general performance. "In some cases," said Ira Schwartz, a coordinator with the New York State Education Department, "parents don't believe the choices they're offered represent a significant improvement." "They may make a judgment that there's likely to be better services available even as the school may be closing for poor performance," he said. The notion of children attending public schools not in their neighborhood is not new. Many cities, including New York and Los Angeles, already permit open enrollment. In those places, the law will mainly serve to give priority to students from the failing schools. But few have availed themselves of the offer. Families of 220,000 New York City children attending about 70 of the city's lowest performing schools, or Schools Under Registration Review, received letters this summer offering them the option to transfer, said Thomas Entenen, a spokesman for city schools. So far, 2,800 have applied for transfers. New York State has not released the names of 529 schools deemed subpar in its federal tally - five times more than on its so-called SURR list, which consists of only the very lowest performing schools. New York officials say they are updating the federal list with 2001-2002 test scores, and will tell parents which schools are failing on Sept. 2, just a day or two before the first day of school for most in the state. Baltimore had expected "an onslaught" in response to the new law, said Edie House, a schools spokeswoman. But just 347 parents competed for transfers. Because the best schools attracted the most applicants, only 97 children landed in their first-choice school, she said. Keltrice Dumas, a clerk whose son Lorenzo is entering the sixth grade at Marquette Elementary, a failing school on Chicago's South Side, said she would not transfer him, even if she could. The school is only three blocks from her house, and when school ends, Lorenzo can spend the hour or so until his mother gets home from work with his grandmother, who lives near Marquette. "I look at it, as long as he's passing to the next grade, I don't see any reason I should have him transferred," she said. Because of limited seats in its better schools, Chicago created a pilot program in which only students from schools with the highest poverty and lowest scores would be allowed to transfer. Officials had originally proposed allowing parents to transfer their children to one designated school. After federal intervention, the city decided to offer parents at least two choices. Marquette parents recently received letters saying that even though the school was labeled failing, students would not be able to transfer out because it was not among the lowest performing. Marquette would instead enhance its programs. Bruce Hunter, chief lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators, said that with school districts scrambling, he did not think a single state would be in full compliance with the law when school starts. Detroit, for example, like New York, has not yet identified all of its nearly 50 failing schools, said Stan Childress, a spokesman for the Detroit education department. In Los Angeles, administrators identified 50,000 students for its choice program before realizing the city could not carry through with choice this year, said Barbara Lockert, a Title I administrator. Some education officials have predicted that the law will raise the expectations of poor parents, and build political support for charter schools and vouchers. But federal control could also backfire, experts say. When the federal tally showed Ohio with 760 failing schools, the state reduced the number to 212 in part by lowering standards it concluded were unrealistic, said Dottie Howe, a state education department spokeswoman. Michigan is considering following suit. T. J. Bucholz, a spokesman for the state education department, said the board had established tough academic standards in 1997. Now that the results could mean financial penalties and the stigma of failure for 41 percent of the public schools, officials are considering adjusting standards downward, he said. "While we agree with much of No Child Left Behind, we don't believe that Michigan should be punished for having a higher standard," Mr. Bucholz said. 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