Anchorage Daily News

Alaska won't get any breaks on meeting a strict federal law designed to improve teaching and student performance nationwide, at least for now.

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The U.S. Department of Education said this week it has turned down Alaska's request to have flexibility in meeting terms of the No Child Left Behind law.

State education officials for years have complained that the one-size-fits-all nature of the federal law is unfair to Alaska's rural schools and could punish them unjustly.

The law requires students achieve academic benchmarks, or adequate yearly progress, on state exams. Schools that fail to meet the targets for multiple years face restructuring, such as replacing the teachers, being converted to charter schools or hiring private management firms to run them. All students are expected to pass the exams by 2014.

Alaska was one of 17 states that applied for flexibility under a new pilot program from the U.S. Department of Education. Six states were approved: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio. Each can now create its own formulas to help its struggling schools.

Alaska's application, which advocated focusing state efforts on the 50 schools that most need intervention, did not pass muster.

"We were disappointed, certainly," said Les Morse with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who visited Alaska Bush schools last summer to see for herself the unique challenges, has said up to 10 states will be allowed to try to participate in the pilot program. The Education Department plans to review additional state proposals this fall. Alaska will tweak its application and re-apply, Morse said.

"Other states have rural schools but some of our issues are really exacerbated. In Alaska, rural is really remote," said Alaska's No Child Left Behind administrator, Margaret MacKinnon.

In the Bush, small schools can fail to make the grade for a number of reasons, including that attendance and graduation rates can be thrown off by just a few students. When schools fall short, the federal law says there are to be certain interventions, but those are difficult to administer, including free tutoring and offering students the option of transferring elsewhere when the nearest village is far away and only accessible by plane or boat.

Last year about 170 of the state's 500 schools did not make the benchmarks, or adequate yearly progress. The 2008 scores for Alaska schools are due out in August.

The preliminary student scores show a nearly statewide flat-lining of progress in math, reading and writing test scores over last year. This comes after several years of steady achievement.

The federal law has come under scrutiny since it was enacted six years ago, but it is expected to be revamped and reauthorized by Congress. MacKinnon said she at least hopes some of the ideas in the various state flexibility proposals will be written into the new law.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

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