Is the state getting ready to pounce?

If you read Karen Frisco's column today about the December meeting of the State Board of Education, you'd think the IDE was scheming to turn our failing high schools over to a greedy for profit operator as soon as possible. If you watch the video of part 2 of the December meeting ( www.doe.in.gov./stateboard/), however, you might question her hysteria at the thought of losing "local control". There are a number of steps necessary for a state takeover, like getting another round of ECA test results (not the 3-8 ISTEP+ which she erroneously refers to) this spring which have to come up by 3% to get the high schools off the hook for a while.

In the case of SSHS, for example, their math passing rate would only have to go from the current 19% to an equally pathetic 22% to meet the low bar they established last spring. That could happen with a random statistical fluctuation or an easier test, like we saw with the ISTEP+. Nevertheless Karen thinks it's ironic that we taxpayers would have to continue paying for the $30 million remodeling bond for South Side, or the $60 million bond for NSHS if they grab that one, only to have it turned into a charter school. But she saw nothing ironic with spending another $1 billion or so to remodel other district schools a few years ago which might also get taken over down the road. Pissing that money away was "sensible".

The JG and the district are in la la land. We can only hope the IDE brings them back to reality.

Where is Wolcotville?

Today's Sentinel had a letter from Richard Poor of Wolcotville, suggesting to FWCS parents that they need to make their complaints about FWCS known to the school board. The only difference between talking to our school board and talking to a brick wall is that the head brick, Mark GiaQuinta, will have the police haul you out of the room if you get too uppity. Just to make sure they don't get embarrassed, they won't let the public speak until after the meeting is adjourned and the TV cameras are turned off. As board member John Peirce opined, " why let the public use our facilities to criticise us?".

Then Mr. Poor suggests using Wendy's upcoming evaluation as an opportunity to change. Apparently he doesn't know she has a no cut contract and that her performance has no bearing on her continued employment. Never did since the day she was hired for that matter.

Must be a different world up there in Wolcotville.

Gaming the tests makes AYP meaningless

As expected, grades 3-8 across the state, not just FWCS, got "better" this year as test difficulty on the ISTEP+ dropped in the second year after moving to spring testing. Whereas 47% of middle and elementary schools were in the watch or probation category, that number dropped to 27% in just the last year. Anyone who would bet money that such an improvement is possible in one year, should be taking out credit default swaps.

With high school testing changing from Graduation Qualifying Exams to End of Course Assessments, the state has not yet decided how to determine AYP for the high schools. When ECA's were give two years ago, the results were not counted. The statewide passing rates were then around 40%. Last spring they came up to about 60%. Again such an "improvement" is not possible in one year without dumbing down the tests. Despite easier tests, the results for our local high schools, especially the LEAD schools are still so bad (around 50% passing in English and 20% in math) that it would be hard to get worse. All five FWCS high schools are now on academic probation. How can the high schools all get worse while the lower grades are all doing better? They can't.

So you can bet that the ECA's will get easier again next year and our high schools will dodge the bullet. The state doesn't really want to take them over anyway. But to avoid that by gaming those tests they will also lose their credibility. FWCS didn't have any credibility to start with. With the IDE declaring victory, we'll have to see if the Republican legislature figures out what's going on. But don't bet on that either.

JG finally writes about high school scores

Today's JG article about the high school ECA's, coming well after the elections naturally, is pretty much on target about the miserable state of our high schools. The high schools are at the end of the line, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak and show the effect of socially promoting half our students through middle school. What the article didn't contain were the individual scores. Although no FWCS high school looks good, the LEAD schools are awful especially in Algebra I, where NSHS LEADs with 32% passing, followed by Wayne at 20% and SSHS at 19%.

In FWCS' defense the ECA's are harder than the GQE's they replaced (just as the spring 3-8 ISTEPs were easier). The state dropped 6% in both math and English vs. the GQE's, but even after adding 6% to FWCS scores they would still be bad. Well at least we won't have to endure another unctuous press conference, just the usual blather by Krtista Stockman.

We have two new board members now, Julia Hollingsworth and Lisa Olinger who actually know what's going on in our classrooms. Whether they can bring the rest of the board into reality remains to be seen. And the reality is that, even if everything went well at lower grade levels, it would be a decade or more before the LEAD high schools would come back. If I were GiaQuinta, I would be begging Tony Bennett to take them off Wendy's hands.

A "Canterbury Tale" for election day

According to the recently released scores on the high school End of Course Exams ( an embarrassment still being "vetted" by Wendy until after the election) only 20 % of the students at my Alma mater, SSHS, now a "LEAD" school , passed the state test over the Algebra I course they had just taken. At Canterbury school the passing rate was 100%. There is one Canterbury student, however, who has not been able to receive credit for passing the ECA because he didn't take a course called "Algebra I" and the bureaucrats at the IDE don't know how to deal with that. Oh, yeah, the student was a fourth grader.

Forty years ago there was no Canterbury. There was no need for a Canterbury because parents with talented children wouldn't have been concerned about sending them to FWCS. But even though incumbent FWCS board President Mark GiaQuinta, wasn't intimately familiar with the situation at South Side, he knew enough to send his kids to Canterbury High School instead.

Can our high schools ever regain their former excellence? Not with a board whose purpose is celebrating the satus quo. Not with a board that wouldn't address reality without the threat of state intervention. Not with a board that isnt' willing to start with K-3 and insure the gains there eventually pay off in the high schools. Not with this board.

Mitch to Tower , " Everything looks good from 30,000 ft".

At a candidates seminar for the "BIZPAC" endorsement (rigged for a predetermined outcome) incumbent Mitch Sheppard gave her philosophy for school board governance as "taking a view from 30,000 feet". If you had flown in an airplane over lower Manhattan in the summer of 2008, Wall Street would have looked great from 30,000 ft. If you had been sitting in the boardrooms of Lehman's, AIG, Merrill, Wachovia or any other financial firm about to crater, everything would have looked good from the top floors of their headquarters. If you're sitting on the board in the Grile Center everything looks as good as what Wendy tells you.

That situation will continue if the candidates endorsed by such "experts" as BIZPAC and the JG make up next board. The "experts" are only slightly less informed about the situation in our classrooms than our board members. The problem is in our classrooms. The solutions have to come from people who have been in the classrooms. No one who has been in the schools would believe that last spring's increase in 3-8 ISTEP+ passing rates showed a real improvement. But that's what our board believes because they have no first hand knowledge of the reality in our buildings. Maybe that's what the public believes as well, even after they eventually see the miserable results from the high school ECA's. We'll see Tuesday.

School Takeovers Imminent for NSHS and SSHS?

The JG editorial page reported this morning that the Indiana Department of Education may be ready to turn failing schools, including NSHS and SSHS over to charter operators after the election. The state will be formulating rules for the handover, which could presumably occur any time after that.

When the district did their LEAD school shuffle it seemed likely that the state would at least give them some time to see how they performed. On the other hand, last spring's high school End of Course Examination (ECA) results for SSHS and NSHS (which have been kept out of the papers and off TV prior to the election) are so bad that the IDE may feel, as I do, that improvement is unlikely without intervention, at least until elementary school improvements filter up.

Of course at the end the JG laments the loss of control by our locally elected board. Hey, if it happens, it happened on their watch. And the JG has endorsed all but one incumbent for reelection for the "progress" they district's made, like making AYP when the tests got easier. How much more evidence of the impotence of our board do we need to see?.

By the way, "Waiting for Superman" is playing at the RAVE. If it doesn't shake you up, go ahead and vote for the incumbents.