More than 100 Kansas schools have been listed by the U.S. Department of Education as low-achieving, opening the door for students to transfer to better schools if their current school is on the list.

In all, 118 Kansas schools are on the list released last week as part of President Bush’s new child education law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

None of the low-performing schools is in Lawrence, but schools in Baldwin, Gardner, Leavenworth and Ottawa are listed.

Nationwide, 8,652 schools made the list.

State education officials expect to find out by next month how many schools will be affected by the new federal law. It could affect fall enrollment in several Kansas school districts, particularly Wichita and Kansas City, Kan.

As yet, it’s unclear which schools will be affected because the law applies only to schools that have been on the low-performing list for two consecutive years. Kansas officials still are compiling the test scores that will determine the second-year list.

“We should know by August,” said Jan Freden, team leader in charge of state and federal programs at the State Board of Education.

Freden said some of the 118 schools were likely to drop off the low-performance list because of improvements in their students’ test scores.

Little rural impact

The new law allows parents whose children attend a low-performing school to demand a move to a higher-performing school within the same district. Districts must comply and provide transportation or other services, such as tutoring.

The new law is not expected to much affect the state’s rural districts, many of which have only one elementary school and one middle school. Though the law allows students to seek transfers to schools in other districts, that’s not likely in many rural districts because of distance.

Argonia Elementary School, for example, is on the list. It’s the only elementary school in USD 359, in south-central Kansas. So if Argonia Elementary School makes the second-year list, its students probably wouldn’t be affected by the law because there’s no other elementary school in the district for them to transfer to.

That’s not the case in Wichita and Kansas City, Kan., where 14 and 29 schools, respectively, are on the low-performing list.

“At this point, we’re not sure how it’s going to affect us, but, yes, we are the state’s largest school district and we have a significant number of schools on the list,” said Susan Arensman, a communications specialist with the Wichita school district.

Wichita school officials, she said, expected some of the schools to avoid the second-year list.

Arensman said most of the Wichita schools on the list were those with high numbers of students not yet fluent in English.

Area schools on the first-year list include:

l Baldwin Baldwin Elementary, Marion Springs Elementary.

l Ottawa Ottawa Middle School.

l Gardner Edgerton Elementary.

l Leavenworth Nettie Hartnett Elementary.

l Seven elementary schools in the Shawnee Mission school district are on the first-year list, as are four in Olathe.

Efforts to reach officials in each of those districts Friday were unsuccessful.

Craig Grant, a spokesman for the Kansas National Education Assn., said he was skeptical about a low-performer list that included schools in Shawnee Mission and Olathe, usually two of the state’s leading school districts.

“We the state need to look carefully at the factors that got these schools on the list because test scores aren’t enough,” Grant said. “I’m not saying there aren’t schools that have problems, but I think there are schools that are doing everything they can do and, given the challenges they face, it’s still not enough.”

Tougher standards

Wichita’s Arensman, too, was troubled by 118 Kansas schools making the list, when Louisiana had 24, Missouri had 63, and Arkansas had none.

“Arkansas had none?” she said. “I mean, nothing against Arkansas, but you’re telling me they don’t have any low-performing schools? I find that hard to believe.”

In keeping with the No Child Left Behind reforms, a school’s making the list depended on whether it had met its state’s standards. These standards vary from state to state.

“Kansas’ standards are higher than most other states,'” Arensman said.

Across the nation, educators are scrambling to sort out the nuances in the law’s 1,200-plus pages. Some believe the law eventually will identify vast numbers of public schools as failing to meet standards, far more than the 8,600 schools listed last week. The current total accounts for about 9 percent of the nation’s public schools.

Bush signed the sweeping reform bill in January, calling for corrective action in schools that fail to make adequate progress after two years. By this fall, those schools must provide services such as private tutoring and after-school programs and allow transfers.