Get Schooled

By Boo-Boo

September 28, 2006 12:19 PM | Link to this

Patti - I think that you forgot the link….

By catlady

September 28, 2006 12:31 PM | Link to this

It would be great if they would include millage rate for education, avg expenditure per student with and without special ed, and what one mill is worth in that county/city. some of that is available in the Georgia County Guide, if you buy it, but it would be nice to have it in one place.

By Patti Ghezzi

September 28, 2006 12:32 PM | Link to this

Double-click on the word “here.” Or go to:

http://reportcard2006.gaosa.org/

By catlady

September 28, 2006 12:51 PM | Link to this

This is not

This thing has too many blank spaces and too much “glossing over” in its current state!

By jim d

September 28, 2006 01:50 PM | Link to this

Whats this Cat?

Put the data in one place so the public could see what a P-Poor job you’re doing?

NEVER HAPPEN.

By NI7

September 28, 2006 02:48 PM | Link to this

I doubt you will see the ITBS scores published. If that happened it would be more noticeable how “lenient” the scoring of the CRCT is.

By Janine

September 28, 2006 06:02 PM | Link to this

about the Iowa Test Scores At my middle school our team regularly compared the scores of each of our students on the CRCT with their scores on the Iowa . My subject was reading and without exception, those 7th grade students who made the minimum passing score on the CRCT [we used from 300-320] scored a 3rd to 4th grade equivalent in reading on the IOWA. In addition their percentile location was in the depths. The state will never publish those scores not because they will be misinterpreted by parents, but because they know that there are very intelligent parents out there who will immediately come to the conclusion that it’s the IOWA scores and scores on other nationally normed tests that show what’s really happening in Ga. classrooms as compared to those in other states.

By Janine

September 28, 2006 06:15 PM | Link to this

and jimdIt has nothing to do with a poor job done by any teacher. The sooner the public realizes this , the sooner our public schools can begin the task before us…Today’s problems have to do with the educrats at the top not allowing teachers to have input on ANYTHING ACADEMIC. Teachers do not even get to say who passes to the next grade and who does not. Teachers are not allowed to require students to actually come to school, pay attention, do assignments….and many parents surely aren’t requiring anything . The top of the education echelon is littered with totally clueless people, most of whom haven’t been in a classroom for many years, and those who have spent less than 5 years there before they got their internet degree in leadership and moved to the county office. If school systems had intelligent and thougtful and able leadership, even the parents would be forced to come around.

By RA

September 28, 2006 06:26 PM | Link to this

I would like to know approximately what it cost a district to administer the ITBS or CAT to a student. Is it very expensive?

Our district only tests in 3d, 5th and 8th. In other schools my children have attended, in other states (some with less money), the ITBS or CAT was given to every student every year (in addition to those states version of the CRCT). I assumed it did not happen here because of the cost. Is that the reason or is it that the schools don’t really want us to have that information? (I hate to sound paranoid.)

By luvs2teach

September 28, 2006 06:34 PM | Link to this

RA - I don’t have an answer to your money question, but one reason that we don’t test every year is the interuption to instruction caused by testing - the ITBS/CoGAT that we took this year lasted 7 days - during those seven days, I either had shortened classes or I didn’t see all my classes. The kids were usually in a zombie-like state post-test, and we were encouraged not to overload them with work to keep them “fresh” for the test.

By RA

September 28, 2006 07:04 PM | Link to this

Luvs2Teach: Now that you mention it, my 3d grader took the ITBS last week and by Friday he did look a little like a zombie when he got off the bus. He also says he loves testing weeks because there is no homework. So you make a good point.

I liked having the ITBS every year though for my older ones because I knew what my children usually scored (it was remarkable to me how consistent their scores were year to year) and I would definitely notice a drop in years when they had particularly bad teacher or a bad mix in the classroom and sometimes a little spike when they were placed with a really talented teacher.

I’m not sure what to make of the CRCTs. Both my younger school age kids scored incredibyly high this year and one of them usually scores a lot closer to the middle on other standardized tests. It made me wary. (He is the one who took the ITBS last week, so that will tell me more, I think.)

By jim d

September 29, 2006 08:03 AM | Link to this

Janine,

After rereading my previous post I feel I owe a sincere apology or at the least an explanation to teachers reading this blog. When I said “you” I wasn’t referring to you individually or collectively as teachers. I guess I should have said “our schools” which to me is the system.

I understand Teachers hands are tied in most instances and you can only do what you are allowed to by administrators who must answer to an appointed dictator called the school super. So to all of you dedicated teachers, let me say most of you are doing an excellent job of doing what you are allowed to regardless of how p-poor the decisions are as to what you shall be allowed to do.

Whatta ya think, Mr. T ?

By sarahfromatlanta

September 29, 2006 08:37 AM | Link to this

Hmmm. Interesting. My kid took the Iowa last year for the first time and blew it out of the water on most parts (grammar and puntuation was a little weak), ending up with about 98% percentile compostite. However, she barely made exceeds on the CRCT. I would think that she would have done better on the CRCT if she had such a high Iowa - given what Janine says.

My understanding is that the Iowa is more of an aptitude test - sort of like the SAT but for younger kids. In constrast, the CRCT only measures content knowledge. Am I right?

Now I’m getting paranoid.

By scv

September 29, 2006 09:02 AM | Link to this

One thing that confused me were the variety of subject areas across certain grades where the % meeting or exceeding expectations in total was roughly consistent with last year. However, the % exceeding plummeted. This was the case at our Cobb elem, and when I checked other, more “reputable” schools I found something similar. Did they dramatically adjust the benchmark to cross that threshhold?

By jim d

September 29, 2006 09:35 AM | Link to this

scv,

Just my opinion but this may be indicitive to teaching to the bottom more so than to changing benchmarks.

Again, Teachers are being hard pressed to accomplish the impossible task of creating 100% passage rates.

By Mr T

September 29, 2006 09:52 AM | Link to this

Jim, Keep up the great blogs. You are a well informed person and I enjoy reading what you have to say. Most times you hit it on the head.

By Mr T

September 29, 2006 10:08 AM | Link to this

I think that most teachers would agree that a lot of things that go on in schools are out of our hands and quite ridiculous. I personally sit back and laugh at least 3 times a week at some of the stuff. It is this big joke that nobody can do anything about. I wish that I could teach 50 years ago when there was little testing and high student accountablility. At home they didn’t talk about a school’s report card they talked about the student’s report cards. I aready know where I would have hung my paddle in my classroom.

By V for Vendetta

September 29, 2006 10:30 AM | Link to this

Don’t worry Jim, we knew what you meant! Like Mr. T said, you are pretty much right on with your assessment of the situation. Many teachers I teach with have some truly great and innovative ideas, but they are squashed by the constrictions that we have to deal with on a day to day basis.

We are in the grip now of “essential vocabulary” here at my school. We have come up with word lists of terms they should know in order for them to be more effective at reading comprehension. The reason behind this?

All the vocab we were doing was not adequately preparing them for reading comprehension on standardized tests!

Wait? What!? We are going to improve their reading comprehension, which is lacking because of a focus on vocab, by giving them MORE vocab? This is the kind of stuff jim was talking about. It is universally panned in our department as an idiotic idea, but guess what, we don’t have a choice. So we have to sit there and watch the kids suffer and we cant do a damn thing about it.

Sure, maybe some of you think we could stand up and be the dissenting voice, but given the nature of the sytem, would you really want to be that voice? Neither would I.

By jim d

September 29, 2006 11:52 AM | Link to this

Thanks V and Mr. T,

Oh, and Mr.T—glad to see you made it through yesterday.

By catlady

September 29, 2006 12:42 PM | Link to this

sarah- my take on the difference in the IOWA and CRCT is that the IOWA is a nationally normed test comparing how kids do from state to state on generally recognized facts/skills, and the CRCT is supposed to measure if students have mastered the GEORGIA curriculum. Look at the dates your child took them. Our kids are worn out by the CRCT a week or 2 before the spring ITBS, and they know the ITBS “doesn’t count” and I think that explains some of the usual lower scores we have on the ITBS. Your child may have done the CRCT after the IOWA, and the EF (exhaustion factor) had kicked in.

We are about to do the IOWA 7 WEEKS AFTER the beginning of school and will repeat it 6 weeks or so BEFORE the end and this somehow measures the year’s gain????!!!!I hate to be evaluated this way, especially because of the EF in the spring!

The CRCT reading should be passed by everyone going to the next grade. Period. It is a minimal test. I have had non-English speaking/non-readers nearly pass the CRCT before—explain that!

By Janine

September 29, 2006 01:22 PM | Link to this

Sarah…I’m with Catlady. The IOWA is a nationally normed test in which your student is compared with other students throughout the US. The 98th percentile tells you that only 2% of the students taking that test did better than your child. The items on the IOWA are much more challenging than those on the CRCT, both in reading comp. and math, and cover much more material, some of which your child may have studied, some he may not have, depending on the curriculum in his/her school system. THe CRCT is a MINIMUM competency test, designed for NCLB. AND remember , a student only has to get a small number of items correct in order to pass [it use to be 17 out of 40 but I think that’s been upped a little]. I wouldn’t worry a bit if your student did exceptionally well on the IOwa and didn’t do so well on the CRCT.

By MMM

October 2, 2006 11:45 AM | Link to this

The only thing I trust is the year to year gain or loss that my particular child has on the IOWA.

Our school doesn’t do particularly well on the CRCT pass rates because we seek to serve refugees that come with little or no English or prior schooling and mix them in with American kids of all backgrounds.

You can do well in the CRCT if your teachers are made to spend all their time on just the specific skills mandated in the Georgia standards—-but that broad overall knowledge gain and comparison to kids their age nationally won’t be there. So you can be happily chugging along on Georgia’s narrow standards and be slipping relative to everyone else at the same time. Or a school/teacher who bucks this narrow mindedness could have kids that don’t do so well on the CRCT—but instead read more widely and excell at the IOWA.

Yes, with today’s mobility it does make sense to have some state-wide agreement on what should be learned at different grades—but you can tell a “failing” school/community by the degree to which “drill and kill” turns off both students and teachers to education. The IOWA does not reward it because they pull the questions from a much wider view of what kids ought to know at various levels.

BTW—-each testing set is normed with others sitting for the test at the same date. So what a fall and spring retest will tell you, is whether those particular children learned more or less then other children across the nation in those same 6 months. Weaknesses in how narrow the teaching focus is will work against us, if others across then nation are not as narrow in their approach.