President Bush's education plan, a new iteration of an old law, mandates that every school in America set up a system holding students, teachers and schools accountable. The plan's goal is to have all the nation's students pass a set of standardized tests by the year 2013-14, and it has Indiana educators concerned.

At the March Indiana State Board of Education meeting, educators from across the state had a variety of names for the new mandate, from "mean-spirited," "inflexible," and "unfair" to "fundamentally flawed," "not appropriate," and "absurd." One superintendent pleaded with the State Board in a letter, "Are we not setting the majority of our schools in Indiana up for failure?"

The goal of the new education plan, nicknamed "No Child Left Behind," is to determine which students are not meeting basic standards in order for schools to address their needs. However, the proposed method for judging progress is incompatible with Indiana's own accountability system, forcing the state to modify its methods to suit the new mandate.

Some educators, like Lowell Rose, emeritus director of the national education organization Phi Delta Kappa, and consultant for the Indiana Urban Schools Association on NCLB, see this as a tragedy.

"If I sound angry today, it's not anger at you at all. It's anger at what a law is going to do to Indiana schools," Rose announced during the public portion of the meeting. "If I sound sad, it's because 'No Child Left Behind' had great promise. It promised that we were going to, for the first time, address the achievement gap and take care of the kids that are not achieving at the present time."

The mistake NCLB makes, Rose said, is to force all schools, regardless of their make-up or problem areas, to have the same achievement goals and use the same starting point for school evaluation. On the contrary, Indiana's existing accountability system allows for schools to have different rates of progress and different goals.

NCLB also states that student goals should be raised each year such that in 2013-14, all students will be required to pass assessment tests or the school will be considered "failing." Unlike Indiana's plan, NCLB does not allow for much difference between students.

When Rose applied the NCLB rules to existing test data, he hoped to get an idea of what the results will be once the new system is in place next year. What he found was disheartening. His test data showed that 92.5 percent of Indiana's school corporations would be judged as 'failing' under NCLB. While Rose's results may or may not be statistically significant, he believes they foreshadow what is to come.

"I wish I could tell you that I think my projections are wrong," he told the State Board, "but I do not."

Part of the reason for Rose's high number of 'failing' schools is NCLB's definition of 'failing'. The education plan calls for standardized tests in both English/Language Arts and Math to be given to all grades, three and up. Not only must a majority of students pass the tests in each school to avoid the 'failing' label, but the same percentage must pass in a school's subcategories as well. That means that students placed in subcategories, determined by gender, race, income level, language proficiency and special education needs, must all meet the same goals.

The quandary is that for many of the subcategories, current test results show that only half of the students will pass the tests. In addition, some problems, like the health, attendance or home life of a student, may not be problems a teacher can fix. In order for students in some of these subcategories to meet higher goals, Rose said, it is crucial to take into account the deficits these students already have built up.

"You've got to make a tremendous investment if you want those kids to get there," said Rose.

Even special education students are expected to perform at the same level as every other group. Under NCLB, special education students cannot be given alternate assessment tests or they will be considered "failing."

One concerned PTA president wrote to the State Board, "To expect that a child who is so disabled that he cannot bathroom himself to do math, reading/language arts to the same proficiency level as others his age makes no sense at all."

And as Rose writes in his report, "If the special education students in those groups can meet those goals, they should not be in special education."

NCLB's main purpose is to identify poorly-performing students in order to bring them up to a certain level of proficiency. But some educators, like Barb Backler, Curriculum Coordinator for Harmony School in Bloomington, feel that there are "more authentic ways" to evaluate students and schools.

"Teaching for meaning is critical," Backler said. "If I know my students well, then I don't need a written evaluation to (identify who needs extra help)." Anytime we ask people to all know the same things, it limits what they learn, she said. "And standardized tests inhibit teachers to do good teaching, particularly the creative ones."

Other educators are excited about the prospects of improvement, but feel that labeling schools as 'failing' presents a serious dilemma. Rather than encouraging learning and creating a positive atmosphere, Superintendent for Michigan Area Schools Dr. Linda Anast fears NCLB's approach will instead have a "profoundly negative impact." Under a previous Indiana school accountability system, half of the schools in her district were placed on probation.

"We cannot adequately describe the devastation that was inflicted upon our community by these labels," she wrote to the Board. "The impact was felt by (the entire community). While everyone eventually rallied around all of our students, it certainly took a toll on the community that is being felt even today."

Even educators in favor of standardized assessments find problems with the way NCLB mandates testing. NCLB uses a one-size-fits-all approach to reduce achievement gaps between different types of students, but it does not account for external problems that could affect their scores. It favors smaller schools with less student diversity because these schools are less likely to have enough disabled, poor, or ethnic minority students to create a subcategory. Also, the use of one test to evaluate both learning and teaching effectiveness is questionable.

But perhaps the most crucial concern for Indiana is not having enough funding and resources to make the changes necessary for dramatic improvements. Currently, Indiana only tests students at grades three, six and ten. Next year, Indiana will have to administer the tests for every grade level.

Besides the testing, NCLB calls for more staff training and other programs designed to improve schools. While the federal government is providing Indiana additional money to help implement NCLB, it may not be enough. "For the first couple of years, we're fine," Director of School Assessment Bruce Wes said. But, when the tests and other programs are fully implemented, the amount of money provided by the government is not going to cover the full cost of NCLB.

What's more, if a school receiving extra government funding does not meet the minimum standards for two years, it will be required to fund outside tutoring for students. If the school misses the mark the following year, it has to offer parents the choice of switching to another school. For most corporations, this means no money will be left behind for providing assistance within low-performing schools, which further impedes that school's ability to operate, much less improve.

What will Indiana do? One thing is certain for Mary Wilhelmus, Director of Communications for the Indiana Department of Education. "We cannot continue to do things the way we have been," she told the State Board, "and expect to get different results."

The Board of Education is concerned about the ramifications of NCLB, but it is taking steps to ensure compliance nonetheless. It has spent considerable time modifying Indiana's existing accountability plan, P.L.221, to comply with the rules set out by the federal government.

The education community supported P.L.221, Associate Superintendent Frye said. "P.L.221 is considered to be one of the most aggressive plans in the nation," he said. It is not one that tries to get around what the federal government has been asking for, he said. "It's got some teeth to it."

The concern with NCLB is that if Rose's prediction comes true, Indiana won't know whether schools that don't pass are improving until the following year's test data is out. By then, 270 schools may be labeled 'failing' and "NCLB will be thoroughly discredited," Rose said. This possibility disappoints him because he believes discrediting NCLB will also negatively impact the public's perceptions of Indiana's original accountability plan. Establishing a credible school accountability system becomes more difficult in the future.

Indiana's State Department of Education is attempting to avoid this potential outcome by giving schools every benefit of the doubt. For instance, under NCLB next year, statistical significance tests will be applied to each result so one student's scores won't necessarily mean the difference between a school 'passing' and 'failing.' It also helps to account for students who are in more than one subcategory.

"What we're trying to do," Indiana's test expert Wes said, "is to make sure that before we place a label that says a school didn't (pass), that we're certain that there really is a group of students who is not well served." Unfortunately, re-framing how the data is analyzed won't change NCLB's fundamental basis.

Whether Indiana's educators stand in favor of standardized tests or against, many believe NCLB will mean tougher times for Indiana's children, rather than improved schools.

"It's an unfortunate mandate from the government," said Indiana teacher Chad Tyler. "The amount of federal funding is not going to come close to the amount of funds needed to succeed. There will inevitably be children left behind."

Erika Biga is a graduate student at the Indiana University School of Journalism.