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Then there are schools like Holmes Elementary, a school in a struggling neighborhood north of Miami's downtown. Just 18 percent of students were at grade level in math in the 2002-03 school year. By last year, that number had jumped to 65 percent
-- a 47 percentage point percent increase. Yet students had still not caught up to the rising numbers expected under No Child Left Behind and the school had been in danger of being closed next year. "That is an iconic school in Miami," Carvalho said. "The previous performance was not acceptable and we changed everything about that school." Closing it, he said, "would have been extinguishing the beacon of hope." Robinson is reluctant to say No Child Left Behind didn't work -- he praised it for shining a light on the performance of all student subgroups
-- but says that over time, it rubbed up against the state's accountability system. "It just didn't make any sense," he said. Many also say the 2014 goal to have all students proficient in math and reading is unrealistic. "There's always going to be children that need additional help and there's always going to be children who are ahead of the curve," Blanton said. "It was treating every single class of students exactly the same." District leaders are hoping that under the waiver a school's long-term progress will be taken into account and that they'll have more flexibility on interventions. Under the current law, districts that repeatedly fail to meet the benchmarks are required to set aside federal money to pay for outside tutoring. But many researchers say that's been ineffective. "The results are not there," Carvalho said. Carvalho said that another big burden of the law was providing transportation for students in failing schools to one that is higher performing. With larger percentages of schools falling out of compliance with the law, opportunities to transfer were vanishing. "It becomes very tough to accommodate students," he said. Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to have more local control. "Anytime we can do that where we get to make our own decisions because we know how to take care of our own children. that's a big positive," he said.
[Associated
Press;
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