One boy whose health fails chronically and cruelly these days worries the staff most.

Schools where most disabled children chronically fail to make adequate progress on those tests face severe penalties that could include closing them down.

She argued that that city should spend more money on improving its chronically failing schools instead of using its resources on the $355 million arena.

Here in Michigan, which had some of the nation's toughest standards for judging school performance, state and district education officials are turning away from the sweeping solutions that No Child Left Behind charts for chronically failing schools.

Under his proposal, the federal government could take aid away from chronically failing schools and give it directly to low-income parents.

Five of the district's 13 schools are on the state's list of chronically failing schools.

Students in chronically failing schools will have the right to transfer to better schools anywhere in the city under a revised policy that Chancellor Joel I. Klein will announce today, city officials said yesterday.

She says that the money for an arena could be better spent to improve Newark's chronically failing schools and that the arena measure should be put to a referendum.

Charters are expected to grow exponentially under the new federal education law, No Child Left Behind, which holds out conversion to charter schools as one solution for chronically failing traditional schools.

A stinging report delivered to the State Education Commissioner last April portrayed Newark as a chronically failing district, damaged by mismanagement and paralyzed by cronyism and political interference.