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.

Link to High School ECA Test scores

At Monday's board meeting Wendy said they needed to "vet" the scores for the individual schools before making a public release. They are in fact already public in an EXCEL spreadsheet on the IDE web site given below:

http://www.doe.in.gov/assessment/eca_data.html

Then click on the link above the summary table "Statewide ECA 2009-10 Summary"

Maybe after the election so incumbent board members don't have to explain them before that.

FWEA is MIA

So where are the endorsements and campaign contributions from the teachers' union this year? So far we haven't seen anything - no candidate interviews, no announcements, nothing. As those who primped and preened for their union money in the past have found out, the biggest obstacle to improving our schools, next to the demographics, is the teachers' union. If they were really expecting to make a difference in student achievement, they've since found that FWEA was not going to cooperate.

The union knows neither the current board nor the candidates most likely to be elected to the next board are going to pubicly talk about the situation in the classrooms. The teachers themselves won't even do that. The local board has no other stick over the teacher's union. The contract is set up so that it continues as is even if the board votes against it. The union is not willing to sacrifice to save the jobs of younger teachers in the face of budget cuts, nor are they willing to be flexible in reassignments to help in the struggling schools. The only thing that has motivated them to accept the "LEAD" school redesign so far is the threat of a state takeover and loss of Title I money. They don't want to hear about evaluations or pay based on student performance. And they won't cooperated in extending the "LEAD" concept to other schools. In other words the union is not "about the kids".

Our Democratic school board, even if they really want to do the right thing, will be stymied by the union whose money bought the support of our Democratic politicians. So the only hope for change will have to come from Indianapolis. It's possible that a Republican House and Senate would repeal the law that gave Indiana teachers the right to unionize. That would at least give give our board some degree of local control over the fate of our district. But for our Democratic board to actually support such an outcome is inconceivable.