The Department of Education needs to give schools more
technical assistance as well as carry out implementation
studies to help schools implement a provision of the No
Child Left Behind Act giving students in underperforming
schools the right to transfer to another school in their
district, the Government Accountability Office has said.
It said the provision applies to schools that get Title I
funds and have failed to meet state performance goals for
two years in a row, and that one in ten of America’s
50,000 schools were up for choice in the first two years
of the program — with about one percent of eligible
students, or about 31,000, acting on the option for the
2003 – 2004 school year.
According to GAO, “little is known about the students who
did and did not transfer or factors affecting parents’
transfer decisions,” but a DoE study should yield
information and officials in the eight districts GAO
visited cited tight time frames and limited capacity to
appropriately handle all newcomers, though they expressed
support for any emphasis on higher performance.
DoE needs to address the complexities of the program
with further guidance, “such as how to handle cases where
schools receiving transfers later are identified for
choice and how to expand capacity in the short-term
within budgetary constraints,” said GAO-05-7.
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