WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under pressure from lawmakers, the Bush administration outlined plans Tuesday to examine why some states are excluding huge numbers of children when reporting test scores under the No Child Left Behind Act.
The review comes after The Associated Press reported in April that nearly 2 million students were not being counted when schools reported yearly progress by racial groups.
Testifying before the House education committee, Deputy Education Secretary Ray Simon said state officials will be summoned to a conference this fall to review how and why they were excluding students.
The aim, he said, is to ensure schools are omitting children only when a group of students is so small that including its scores could give an inaccurate picture of a school's performance.
That provision, however, can also be used as a loophole so schools don't have to count struggling kids -- which in turn means they are less likely to be labeled as falling short.
"We don't want false positives, we don't want false negatives," Simon said after testifying to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "The better we can get at making the structure work correctly, then the more likely the children that need the services are going to get them."
The Education Department is under pressure to explain why so many kids' test scores have been left behind under No Child Left Behind -- the centerpiece of President Bush's domestic agenda. The AP stories helped fuel Tuesday's hearing.
Schools must report student performance by race, ethnicity, disability, poverty status, and other categories so that the hard-to-reach kids don't get lost in school averages.
Failure by any one group of students means the whole school falls short under the law.
The AP found some states are setting the minimum group size so high -- as approved by the Education Department -- that they do not have to report scores by race even when they have large numbers of kids. Most of the children whose scores were not counted were minorities.
"This certainly was not the intent of Congress when we passed No Child Left Behind in 2001," said Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-California, the chairman of the committee.
Simon told lawmakers that even when racial or ethnic subgroup of students are not counted at the school, the law has "redundancies" to ensure those kids are included. They may be included in another subgroups, and if not, they will still be counted at the school district level. Plus, Simon said, teachers can use each children's test scores to help them improve.
But the whole point, said Rep. George Miller of California, was to hold schools accountable. The law's penalties and promises for parents are based on school performance.
"It is wrong for the states to exclude these children's scores, and it is wrong for the Department of Education to allow this practice," said Miller, the panel's top Democrat. "This practice undermines No Child Left Behind as a force for the advancement of civil rights."
Simon said the department has gotten much tougher about allowing states to increase the amount of students they may exclude. Of ten states that have asked for more leeway over the last year for statistical reasons, only one, Alaska, has received permission, Simon said.
Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Michigan, asked why the department seemed to be moving from its laissez faire approach with the states. Simon said the department has learned from experience since three years ago, when it approved the first batch of compliance plans from the states.
"We're a lot smarter than we were in 2003," Simon said.
The department's conference this fall will include input from statistical experts. The discussions will be based on the most complete set of test scores since the law took effect.
The 2005-06 school year was the first in which states were required to test students in reading and math each year in grades three to eight, and at least once in high school.