DECATUR - Todd Zoellick temporarily took over a middle school social studies class on Monday.

Zoellick is a regional representative of the U.S. Department of Education and he visited several Decatur schools on Monday. At Thomas Jefferson Middle School, he was intrigued by a project in which students, in groups of four, pretended to be the mayor of a town with four concerns: Getting re-elected; getting equal rights for all citizens; increasing tourism; and fighting prejudice.

Of course, that wasn't his purpose in visiting Decatur schools. In answer to a student's question, Zoellick said an important responsibility of his job is to serve as a bridge between local districts and Washington, D.C.

Superintendent Gloria Davis said she wants Zoellick to see - and to take back to Washington - that all districts aren't the same, and some face bigger challenges.

Urban districts like Decatur, with high poverty and diversity, are required to meet the same benchmarks as rich suburban districts.

"That's not to make an excuse," she said. "That's just (to say) let's be realistic about the playing field."

Zoellick's visit, she said, was a chance for Decatur administrators to sit down and talk with him about such concerns and also show that the district is making progress.

"I wanted him to see that here in Decatur we are doing great things," Davis said. "We have a long way to go and we have many challenges. We know that we can do what we need to do. We just need the resources and capability to make it happen but we're going to do what we can on our end."

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings knows that some districts have greater challenges and also that placing all schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress in the same category doesn't give a clear picture, Zoellick said. A pilot program has begun in some states to create a more nuanced way of tracking the reasons that a school didn't make adequate yearly progress.

"The secretary is calling a 'differentiated accountability' program," he said. "It allows us to more accurately label schools on the continuum of where they fall. We have some schools that are not making adequate yearly progress across the board. It's important that we know that, because we need to address those issues. On the other end of the spectrum, we have schools that are just barely missing adequate yearly progress. Now we put them all into one big group and say they're not meeting AYP, when in reality, there are a lot of different issues and different solutions to those issues, depending on where you fall on that spectrum."

No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization this year, and while Congress has yet to reauthorize it, changes to the law are on the horizon, Zoellick said. Most of those changes will likely be in answer to the concerns of educators nationwide who have called for less dependence on a single test to determine schools' success.

Valerie Wells can be reached at vwells@herald-review.com or 421-7982.