Leonia Board of Education

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS TASK FORCE CHARGE

Although the Leonia Public Schools serve fewer than 1,800 students, our population includes rich and poor, White, Asian, Black and Hispanic. Some of our students begin their schooling with us in Pre-kindergarten and continue through graduation from LHS. A small percentage of local residents leave our schools in favor of a variety of public, private and parochial alternatives. Societal mobility patterns take students away and bring students in at any and all grade levels. A longstanding sending-receiving relationship with the K-6 Edgewater School District adds further texture to our student population. During this current school year, 277 among our total population of 1730 live in Edgewater.
  
For a variety of reasons, educational results in the United States closely correlate with economic class. For a similar set of reasons, economic class is interwoven with ethnic and racial identity. These are longstanding correlations, rooted in social conditions in which all of our nation's public schools are nested. Five years ago, federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation fundamentally altered the landscape of public schooling by holding us "accountable for results" as measured by commercially produced tests in Language Arts, Math and Science that our students take on an annual basis. Each state is responsible for contracting with a test provider and establishing "cut-off scores" that distinguish the "proficient" from the "non-proficient." Through to the year 2013 --- when 100% of all students in all categories "will be proficient" --- schools and school districts must assure that a rising number of students in all categories achieve proficiency as determined by these tests. There are 40 categories at issue and they sift the student population into sometimes overlapping ethnic, economic, mainstream, special education and limited English proficient niches. To avoid escalating pressure and punishment --- the so-called "shame and blame" aspects of NCLB ­ schools and schools districts must present proficient test scores for students across all 40 categories.
  
Accountability of a different kind arises from the weight that families of relative privilege attach to college entrance tests. In this instance, test results are regarded as indicators of individual educational worth for use in competitive college admissions. Elite colleges use these results for their own benefit to filter their applicant pools and to maintain their market status by accepting a few students and rejecting far more. Unlike the accountability of NCLB, the accountability of tests associated with college entrance reflects parental judgments about the role of the school in elevating individual test scores. Schools that fare poorly by this measure invite families with means to opt out and look at other schools for their children.
  
The net effect of Federal policy and family judgment creates a challenge for the Leonia Public Schools. Currently, we educate a population that includes students who require high test scores to access selective colleges and universities. We also educate those whose historically low test scores threaten us with Federal sanctions under NCLB. Hanging in the balance is our ability to sustain ourselves as a small school district serving all of our students with distinction. School districts serving a wealthier, more homogenous clientele face lesser challenges with more financial and social resources.
    

MISSION