Education's hottest topics get an airing

LEHI — Margaret Dayton says she's found a way to eliminate the so-called "achievement gap" in Utah's schools.

It's simple, says Rep. Dayton, R-Orem, the Utah County legislator known for helping lead Utah's resistance to President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act — despite the insistence of some in Utah's education community who think the federal law helps make sure that poor, disabled and ethnic minority students aren't, indeed, left behind.

All schools need to do, Dayton says, is make tests so easy that all students pass or to make tests so difficult that all students fail. If students are tested on material appropriate for the grade, however, there will always be some students who do not perform well on the standardized tests, said Dayton, who moved a bill through the legislature last spring that requires educators to prioritize the state's standardized testing system ahead of the federal requirements.

"The goal should not be to make everyone the same," she said during a recent gathering of educators and policy-makers to discuss education issues in Utah.

The requirements of the federal education act and "achievement gaps," which are documented disparities in test scores among children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, were discussed by some 180 attendees of the Utah Education Deans' Colloquium.

University of Utah education professor Enrique Aleman is one of those who disagrees with Dayton. The whole point of NCLB, he says, is to make sure all children are learning — not just those from wealthy or English-speaking families.

Fifty years ago, the federal government had to oversee desegregation in state schools. Today, even though segregation is history, minority students generally do not score as high as Caucasian students on standardized tests.

NCLB may be today's federal government intervention, Aleman said. "Don't you see any similarities of the federal government saying to the states, 'You have not done your job?' " he said said.

Rep. Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, is a special education teacher in the Granite School District. He said that NCLB shined a light on groups of students who performed poorly on tests and had been neglected.

Utah's school-age population will increase by 10,000 students each year between 2008 and 2016, with many of those new students needing to learn to speak English.

Compounding the problem is the pending teacher shortage. And there are even fewer teachers who are trained to deal with the English-as-a-second-language school population, which may make it difficult to meet the demands of the federal law.