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Friday, July 6, 2007
AYP Is Out
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Department of Education officials just released the annual report on which public schools have made “adequate yearly progress” this year. You can find links to all the data through the department’s press release.
A few interesting statistics immediately jumped out at me, including that nearly all (95.2 percent) of Georgia’s elementary schools are making AYP, but only two-thirds of middle schools (64.4 percent) and barely half (54.9 percent) of high schools are meeting the targets set under No Child Left Behind.
Of course, I haven’t had a chance to sift through all the information yet, so let me know if anything piques your interest.
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Get Rid Of The CRCT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I take schools’ Criterion-Referenced Competency Test scores, which the state Department of Education released this week, with a grain of salt — actually, with quite a bit of salt.
I have reviewed CRCT questions from former tests, and they are not well written. I have seen questions with two correct answers, with no correct answers and some that are so poorly written it’s hard to determine what is being asked.
From what I have seen with my children and from the conversations I have had with fellow parents, CRCT scores often do not correlate to what parents and teachers know are children’s strengths.
I am not terribly interested in knowing that my kid can regurgitate “criteria” every April like a trained dog. I do not particularly care if he knows a list of “skills” thrown together by Georgia bureaucrats.
Knowing my kid’s CRCT scores does not tell me if he has the ability to compete with children from elsewhere in the country. Norm-referenced testing, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, is a far more informative measure that compares children to their peers.
Some testing, conducted at reasonable intervals, does provide parents and schools with valuable information. But all children do not need to be tested for five straight days in every grade for us to know how our schools and children are performing — particularly when the tests are subject to tampering at the whim of politicians who are looking to continue their careers.
Today’s guest blogger serves on the school council at Oakhurst Elementary School in Decatur. She thinks states should move to a randomized, sample testing system that takes less time and tests fewer students, but still provides a check on school quality. To be a guest blogger here, e-mail an entry on any education-related topic to bgutierrez@ajc.com.
