Some Green Bay schools miss federal test standard The schools did not have 95 percent participation in federally mandated tests By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle The Green Bay school district was one of 19 in Wisconsin that did not participate in tests meeting standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The federal law evaluates schools on test participation, graduation and attendance, and achievement levels in reading and mathematics. Green Bay was one of 19 school districts missing the test participation standard. "The new law requires 95 percent participation," said Green Bay Area Public Schools superintendent Daniel Nerad. "Overall, over the past three years, there is an increased number of kids taking the test, but we haven't reached 95 percent for some of them. "Our key need is to focus on improving the rates for the next time the tests are taken." The tests are given in November. Nerad said there were two problems. One is that attendance was not high enough during the test-taking period to reach the 95th percentile. "In some cases we were at 93-94 percent," Nerad said. "That means just a couple of kids not taking the test puts you under compliance." The other is that, while parents may opt to have their children not take the tests, those students are counted in the percentage. "I think that's wrong," Nerad said. There are no sanctions associated with missing the level, this year, but there will be in future years. The largest number of notifications came for missing test participation. The notification was preliminary and subject to correction. Green Bay schools that were listed as missing the test participation standard were East, West and Preble high schools and Danz and Tank elementary schools. Five districts - Hayward, Milwaukee Central City Cyber Charter, Milwaukee Urban League Charter, Milwaukee YMCA Youth Leadership Charter and Wisconsin Dells - had one or more schools that did not meet math standards. Nine - Germantown, Greenfield, Lakeland, Mauston, Milwaukee Cyber, Milwaukee Urban League, Milwaukee YMCA, Mosinee and Wisconsin Dells - had one or more schools that did not meet reading standards. Seven - Lakeland, Menominee Indian, Milwaukee Science, Oconto, Racine, Siren and Webster - did not meet the attendance/graduation standards. The federal law allows students to transfer out of schools that fall behind for at least three years. It also requires that the schools develop improvement plans and tutoring programs. Schools must show proficiency scores for two consecutive years to get off the list. "This law wrongly condemns districts on the basis of a single statistic from a high-stakes test and fails to take into account other measures of learning," said Stan Johnson, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union. The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all school children be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Of the 72 schools, 58 face sanctions. The Associated Press contributed to this story.