A NEW STUDY from the Public Policy Institute of California predicts that a majority of the state's schools will fail to reach No Child Left Behind's impossibly high goals for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) next year. "Very soon almost every public school in California will be labeled a failure," the study's authors write.

The program mandates that schools and districts receiving Title I federal funds make satisfactory yearly improvement toward an established individual goal in math and English. A school which consistently misses its goal over several years is eventually subject to major restructuring. These efforts are costly and their success has been mixed.

The study identified many factors behind its findings but suggested that the larger problem is a  system which does not account for the significant differences in challenges between schools. "Fifty percent of elementary schools with the highest share of low-income students made AYP in 2007, whereas 98 percent of elementary schools with the lowest share of low-income students made AYP," according to the PPIC.

"As a result, a school that inherits many high-achieving students but teaches them very little can be labeled a success, whereas a school that inherits many low-achieving students and teaches them a great deal can be labeled a failure," the authors write. California has a high percentage of disadvantaged students.

The situation will not likely improve given the economy and severe cutbacks and larger class sizes California's schools face next year as a result of state budget negotiations.

WHAT CAN BE DONE besides a complete overhaul of the NCLB rules? The study makes many worthwhile suggestions:

• Invest in preschool. High-quality programs can help close the achievement gap.

• Re-evaluate programs which are not working. The study points to a remedial program for students who have failed the high school exit exam as one which has been ineffective, yet the current budget allocates $73 million to it.

• New, innovative programs which work should be nurtured, piloted and implemented statewide.

• Reform school finance by replacing it with a weighted formula more closely tied to the actual costs of educating students. Schools which have more students from low socioeconomic background should naturally receive more funding, but those with higher regional costs should also receive more dollars.

While few would argue that many reforms are needed in California's education system, NCLB has had an unhealthy effect on the education community nationwide, something Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the American Federation of Teachers conference last week.

"This idea of labeling and stigmatizing schools as failures -- it is unbelievably demoralizing to faculty; it's confusing to parents."

FOOTHILL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER Melissa Wantz knows a thing or two about creativity. The lucky students who have passed through her English classrooms on two Ventura campuses have been encouraged to go beyond the merely expository and work on writing for just the pure joy of it.

Yet in this noble pursuit of stretching and growing young minds and instilling a love for writing, she has often felt thwarted by the constant spector of the standardized test.

"I think at a certain level every human being is a creator and has a deep need to be creative in some way, but when the only mandated method of measuring achievement is through standardized tests, and when so much depends on the outcome of those tests for our schools, the opportunities to practice the creative arts are pushed to the back burner for most teachers, myself included," Wantz said.

So Wantz came up with an idea for a contest to support and showcase the creative work of high school writers, artists and photographers in Ventura County.

The contest will award cash prizes paid for through a Ventura Education Partnership grant and an opportunity to be published in a book compiled by the journalism class at Foothill High.

Both the book and contest take their name from a mythical bird which dies in a fiery death and rises to live once again -- the Phoenix. "Our motto, 'Rising from the Ashes of Standardized Testing,' is taken from this idea of life after death," Wantz writes on her Web site.

TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS across the state will be forced to get creative very shortly when it comes to the budget process. Estimates vary depending on what side of the aisle is doing the cutting, but classrooms statewide could take anywhere from a $4 billion to $10 billion hit this year. So what could go?

If it was up to Ventura Unified Education Association President Steve Blum, it would be all that bubble testing, at least for a year or two. Blum, along with many others, has proposed this idea to state officials.

Chip Fraser, a teacher at Pacific High School in Ventura, seconds the motion. "Not only does it cost money to do the test, but the costs of the materials purchased to help teachers 'teach to the test' are staggering," he said.

How much does testing to support the goals of the unfunded mandate that is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act cost us? Ventura Unified School District Superintendent Trudy Arriaga estimated it costs $30 million per grade in this state to test students.

BUT BLUM DOESN'T realistically see testing going away any time soon. "The state and the feds are unlikely to go along with this idea because it was their idea to do all this testing. People almost always like their own ideas," he said.

Indeed, today our president is delivering a speech to mark the 7th anniversary of the signing of the NCLB Act, which he sees as one of his successes.

Most would agree that measuring a student's progress on agreed-upon goals is a good idea. But many teachers have told me that the rigors of NCLB go beyond merely stifling creativity. Around the country, programs for gifted students are being shuttled; art, music, drama and physical education have taken a back seat and students and teachers alike are just plain stressed out.

"Having started teaching at the beginning of No Child Left Behind, I've gotten to the point where if I can't see measurable gains in my students' work from week to week, I get really nervous and start increasing the pressure on my students, and that's not right," Wantz said.

And debate continues whether the law is even doing the job it set out to do.

With the dawn of a new presidential adminstration, comes the time to re-examine this testing mania. I hope it becomes a priority for Barack Obama and his new Congress.