How do you pass No Child Left Behind . . . when you don’t speak English?

Along with language, Morell teaches simple customs. This year, she finds herself trying to break the students' habit of holding each other's hands. It's something she feels uncertain about, but knows that if they continue, they'll open themselves up to ridicule in the neighborhoods.

Fourteen-year-old Abdikadir is her unofficial aide-de-camp. He's about to finish the program and move into the English-as-a-second-language classroom. He's a round kid who wears a Shawn Marion jersey beneath his white shirt and airbrushed images of Tupac stenciled on his shoes.

Abdikadir functions as the school's interpreter when Aweys is away. He's the only kid who can speak Swahili, Maay-Maay, and Somali, and translate them to English. It's a ridiculous feat for a 14-year-old, but he'll get no acknowledgment from the state. The Ohio Achievement Test, on which the school's fate rests, does not give points to pint-size boys who've mastered multiple languages. The only language that matters is English.

He acts as the classroom interpreter. This afternoon, he has to explain to Morell that one student hit another student with a bag of potato chips. He relays the information quickly, annoyed at being forced to do their tattling. Then he gets back to the word-find puzzle sitting in front of him. All he needs is the word "puddles," and he'll be finished with his assignment. It's the one word that separates him from computer time.

Puddles.

Time is something Gallagher Principal Jennifer Rhone lacks. She spends her day jumping from academic maelstroms to administrative maelstroms, without much hope of getting free. Pinned to her door is her daily schedule, right down to the minute.

A Canadian flag hangs behind her desk. She came to Ohio from Ottawa, but Rhone looks as Canadian as Barack Obama looks like a typical kid from Kansas. Her hair is dyed auburn, and she can pull off large hoop earrings.

This is her first full year at Joseph Gallagher. And today is like any other. A Kenyan family sits outside her office. They came this morning to enroll their kids, which will push Gallagher's numbers to capacity. But she can't help them until she finds an interpreter. Few of these new families speak English.

Before she can do that, an aide shows up at her door with two students caught roughhousing during gym class. Then the phone rings; a teacher needs her in another part of the building. Meanwhile, staticky voices chirp from her walkie-talkie, her computer beeps out e-mail notifications, and a secretary pops in to relay a meeting reminder.

"My days are pretty full," she says.

Every day, Rhone parks her Pontiac Sunfire in the staff lot at around 6:30 a.m. If there are no meetings outside of the school to attend, it stays there until 5:45. She used to spend the first hour planning her day and catching up on unaccomplished tasks. Now she spends it ushering kids through the newly installed metal detector. She has to convince herself that it is what's best for the school, even though it was the district's idea.

It was also a district plan to convert Joseph Gallagher from a middle school to a Pre-K-8 school back in 2005. As a result, it's become one of the largest primary schools in Cleveland, leaving teachers like Francescani working out of storage closets. The school has simply run out of space.

Joseph Gallagher is full of students who are considered "subgroups." Fifty-five percent speak English as their second, third, or fourth language. Another 30 percent are special ed. This means that just 15 percent are normal in the eyes of the state.

Still, all but two students last year made enough progress to fend off No Child Left Behind, according to Vice Principal Sandra Velazquez. But that was two students short. "Two students," she says. "Two. That's how specific No Child Left Behind gets."

Back in 2000, No Child was designed to stop the "soft bigotry" of public education. President Bush wanted to raise the expectation level for minority students. So he ordered testing to make sure they were improving. And if test scores of every kid in the school didn't go up, it was the fault of the school. It matters not if the previous year, the kids were living in rural Romania or the tribal lands of Africa.

No Child gives students the opportunity to transfer out of schools decreed to be failing. And if such schools don't make adequate yearly progress, the state has the right to shut them down.

In Ohio, April is the make-or-break month. Principal Rhone knows that Gallagher needs to pass this year. Failing again could lead to the belching out of a thunderclap of pink slips.

They call it reconstitution — a rather polite term for dealing with schools that chronically suffer from low test scores, discipline problems, or poor attendance. By firing the entire staff and replacing it with new blood, the theory goes, a school can magically solve all the problems. So schools from San Francisco to New York have issued mass dismissals.