Next week, the Minnesota Department of Education will identify which Minnesota schools need work based proficiency testing results. It typifies a law that some school employees and experts say is well-intentioned, but unreasonable.

The law, known as &uot;No Child Left Behind,&uot; signed last year, requires that students in nine categories, including those defined by race, class, and with little English speaking ability, to meet certain standards. If they don’t reach the prescribed yearly adequate progress, the schools will have to use 5 percent of their Title I funding to bus students to other schools, and after three years, they’ll have to use a minimum of 20 percent of the funding for tutoring and transportation. In Minnesota, the categories require 40 people for the test results to apply.

Bill Walsh, communications director for the Minnesota Department of Education, said the focus is kids, not schools. &uot;We’re not saying they’re bad schools, we’re just saying the kids need some help.&uot;

&uot;We have one of the largest achievement gaps in the country between African American students and white students,&uot; he said. &uot;And that’s shameful.&uot; He said that districts with only one school won’t be affected by the law initially.

He said the act will help focus energy on the students who need it the most. He gave the hypothetical example of a school that has 85 percent of students passing reading proficiency tests, &uot;but when we peel back the layers, 25 percent of African Americans aren’t making the grade.&uot; In those cases, the schools have to do better or they’ll be held accountable.

The designations will be announced next week. Schools will have a month to appeal, or declare data errors before the indentifications are made final.

Many school employees and experts have criticized the plan as unreasonable, saying it unfairly labels and penalizes good schools, and doesn’t

account for extenuating circumstances for why students don’t achieve. They also question how diverting Title I funding will improve schools.

David Prescott, Superintendent of Albert Lea Schools, said the best analogy he’s heard is this &045; &uot;It’s like telling a doctor you will not have any patients that will get sick and die.&uot; He says that the testing doesn’t take into account that a child may have just moved into the district, come from a bad home, is undernourished or many other variables that can be applied when dealing with human beings.

&uot;They are assuming that kids are the same and that teachers should be able to get them to the same point,&uot; Prescott said.

He said giving good schools a negative label sends a message to parents that their child’s school is failing, when it’s only a few children that are having problems. He also questioned the wisdom of requiring a school take funds away from teaching to pay for busing and private tutoring.

&uot;It takes a lot of money to improve, and there’s not much money coming from the state and federal level already,&uot; he said.

He predicted that most schools, including some in his district, will eventually be labeled negatively based on the standards that the Minnesota Department of Education is using.

Mark Davison, Director of the office of Educational Accountability at the University of Minnesota, said the idea behind the law is good but the implementation causes problems. He said the idea that special education, or students with little English proficiency, will be able to reach the same standards as other students in their grade is unreasonable.

Becky Schuhmacher, Title I coordinator for Glenville-Emmons, also said she agrees with the law’s intent but has her reservations. She said it’ll place yet another financial burden on schools. She hopes that the message about what the indentifications mean is clear, so that parents don’t say, &uot;Hey, I’m gettin’ my kids out of that school.&uot;