LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

It's really criminal. But I'm not in charge.

From the Boston Globe:

Pressure-cooker kindergarten A new emphasis on testing and test preparation -- brought on by politicians, not early education experts -- is hurting the youngest students.

By Patti Hartigan  |  August 30, 2009

Christine Gerzon is the epitome of a kindergarten teacher: warm and wise, quick to get down on her knees to wipe a tear or bandage a boo-boo. She can rhapsodize for hours about a single leaf and philosophize convincingly about the pedagogical uses of papier-mache. “I teach because it’s my calling,” she says. “It’s my life purpose.”

Yet two years ago, after 38 years as an educator, she threw up her hands and retired. (Her last job was at the Harrington School in Lexington.) She couldn’t stand the pressure.

Pressure? This is kindergarten, the happy land of building blocks and singalongs. But increasingly in schools across Massachusetts and the United States, little children are being asked to perform academic tasks, including test taking, that early childhood researchers agree are developmentally inappropriate, even potentially damaging. If children don’t meet certain requirements, they are deemed “not proficient.” Frequently, children are screened for “kindergarten readiness” even before school begins, and some are labeled inadequate before they walk through the door.

Read the rest here.

Another Year, Another AYP Report

The 2009 New Mexico AYP reports were released yesterday.  Secretary Garcia tried to provide a balanced way of looking at the information, but of course most of the local news outlets took the usual "Schools Fail to Make the Grade" approach.  It's all very frustrating for those who work in the schools--tests that test (or even mis-test) only a tiny portion of what really matters, entire schools being labeled "failures" based on a fraction of what goes on in the school, "interventions" that no one really believes make a difference being forced on schools and teachers and students, and words like "rigor" and "data" being tossed around as if the words themselves have some kind of magical power.  It's hard to believe this mess is what some people call "reform." 

More on Testing

A new study finds that high school exit exams may be having a negative impact on graduation rates. From Education Week:

Researchers found that, after 2004, when 10th graders took the exit exams for the first time, graduation rates across the four districts declined by 3.6 to 4.5 percentage points each year.

During the same time period, student achievement, as measured by other state tests that the students take in 11th grade, did not significantly improve.

The detrimental effects of the new policy were harder on girls in the bottom achievement quartile than on boys. Girls experienced a 19-percentage point drop in graduation rates after the California High School Exit Exam, or CAHSEE, was implemented, while the graduation rate for boys with similar academic profiles decreased by 12 percentage points over the same period.

Likewise, graduation rates among the poorest-performing black, Hispanic, and Asian-American students declined by 15 to 19 percentage points following the enactment of the exit-exam policy. The comparable graduation-rate drop for white students in the same achievement quartile was 1 percentage point.

Read the rest here.

Strange Times

Calif. school tries segregation to boost scores

The Associated Press

ELK GROVE, Calif.—Some parents in a Sacramento suburb are upset after school officials segregated students by race in a move designed to boost test scores.

Students at Laguna Creek High School in Elk Grove were divided by race this week for what the school called "heritage assemblies." The gatherings were designed to motivate students to do better on standardized achievement tests.

That upset Tracy and Herbert Houston, a mixed-race couple who say their son was confused about which rally to attend.

Principal Doug Craig said dividing students by race allowed teachers to talk about test scores without singling out one group in a negative way.

Such race-based assemblies have been practiced in other California schools that are struggling to close student achievement gaps.

Whither the SAT?

The man behind many of the recent changes in the SAT (former Univ. of California president Richard Atkinson) still doesn't think it has much value: "The fundamental question is: what is the SAT measuring?" he said. The answer (aside from writing) is that it is testing things that are "remote from what students encounter in the classroom."  Read "The SAT 'At War with Itself'" at Inside Higher Ed.

Schools in England Do Away With Some Standardized Testing

Yesterday the Guardian newspaper reported that new education policy in the U.K. will do away with a high-stakes test given to 14-year-olds.  The reason?  In part, a failing of U.S.-based ETS to administer the exam.  Read more here Guardian Education 

Secretary Garcia and AYP

NM Education Secretary Veronica Garcia had some interesting things to say about AYP in her August 1 remarks on NCLB and the preliminary AYP results.  Here are some that seemed especially noteworthy:

• We cannot let the AYP label continue to destroy public confidence in our schools and continue to demoralize our teachers and students.
• I implore schools and communities to not get discouraged by a lower AYP rating. We must closely analyze the data, look at improvement, and stay the course.
• I would like to remind our parents, students, teachers, administrators, community members, and state leaders that AYP is only one tool and is a very narrow and sometimes unfair measure of success and progress.
• The accountability system is also unfair in its expectations and support of our English Language Learners, special education students, and low-income students that have additional barriers to learning.
• While AYP is an unfair measure and label for schools because it does not measure growth, using the same snap shot score at the classroom level to judge the effectiveness of a teacher would also be grossly unfair.

You can read the whole thing here.

Mrs. Smith and Mr. Jones

Here's a good essay about NCLB by the 2008 New York State Teacher of the Year: 

November 7, 2007

Teachers need role in fixing  No Child Left Behind

Richard Ognibene

 Guest essayist

Question #1: Mrs. Smith and Mr. Jones both teach fifth grade. In May, only 40 percent of Mrs. Smith's students passed the state's standardized reading test, while 97 percent of Mr. Jones' students passed the same test. Who is the better teacher? A) Mrs. Smith. B) Mr. Jones. C) More information is necessary. If you picked "C," you understand the inherent complexities of education.

Question #2: Mrs. Smith works in a high-needs district. In September, most of her pupils read at a second-grade level, but through brilliant pedagogical strategies and dogged determination, she brought all of her class to a fourth-grade reading level or higher. Some of her students managed to pass the state reading test; all of them showed tremendous growth. Mr. Jones works in a more affluent district. In September, all of his students read at a fifth-grade level and by May most of them read at the sixth-grade level. Who is the better teacher?

According to the No Child Left Behind act, Jones is wildly successful as his students have demonstrated adequate yearly progress. Smith is not so fortunate. According to NCLB, she is an abysmal failure; her students have not shown AYP (adequate yearly progress) and her school will lose funding if this continues.

In a perfect world, every pupil would enter the classroom with age-appropriate skills. However, as a teacher, I am acutely aware that our world is far from perfect. My job is to welcome all of my students and help them improve. I have no control over the skills they have as they enter my room, but I have much to say about the skills they have when they leave. By that standard, Smith should be recognized for her outstanding work.

Read the rest here.

The Ever-Looming Test

From the Boston Globe:

Waging a battle on standardized tests

By Dan Brown  |  November 3, 2007

TEACHERS NEED to pick their battles. I scanned my fourth-grade students in the Bronx and considered several battles in my mind.

Battle Number One: Manolo arrived in my classroom determined to fight the world. His mother had died when he was in second grade and he had to repeat the year. However, Manolo took substantial steps when he began to write creative stories, favoring historical fiction in which he inserted himself into a famous event. His writing revealed great imagination and interest, but his spelling and mechanics remained poor, and state exams continued to label him a failure.

Battle Number Two: Sara entered my classroom leaps ahead of her peers. She wrote hilarious, irreverent poetry and had already mastered grade-level math. She fired off endless questions about current events. Sara was a dream student, hungry to be challenged. However, the administrators at my school discouraged creative lesson planning in order to cram in endless "drill-and-kill" packets of basic skills test-taking strategies.

Battle Number Three: Eddie was in his fourth year in fourth grade because of absences and test failures. It seemed impossible to get him engaged in class. However, he loved to draw and showed a remarkable, natural talent for perspective sketching. Tragically, my class was deprived of all arts in order to allot more time for standardized test preparation.

How could I help these children face their challenges? Every moment, I felt pulled in 26 directions, invariably drawn to the louder children who act out. And then there was the ever-looming Test.

Read the rest here. 

Testing for Dollars

They're paying students for getting high scores on the AP exams in New York City.  From the NY Times:

October 15, 2007

Making Cash a Prize for High Scores on Advanced Placement Tests

 

By Jennifer Medina

 

The city is expanding the use of cash rewards for students who take standardized tests with a $1 million effort financed by philanthropists who will pay students who do well on Advanced Placement exams.

High school students who get a top score, a five, on the exams will earn $1,000. A score of four will be worth $750, while a three will earn $500.

The program, which will be in 25 public schools and six private ones beginning this year, is enthusiastically supported by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who is expected at the announcement of the initiative today at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem. In a statement, Mr. Klein said he was “grateful” that the private group was “stepping up to tackle the critical goal of increasing the number of students who succeed on Advanced Placement tests.”

Read the rest here.