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School group critical of “School Grades”
Written by Charlie Brennan on Jan 31st, 2012. | Copyright © EdNewsColorado.org
I want to thank Colorado Succeeds for its ground breaking work. Not only does the State’s web site place 60% of our schools in the top performing category; it also recognizes as Priority Improvement, High Schools where 93% of 10th graders are not and have not been proficient in Math for 3 years in a row. Does anyone believe that a high school with 93% of students in 10th grade not being proficient in Math for three years in a row deserves to be in a passing category?
While there is definitely room for improvement, Colorado Succeeds has framed the conversation in a way parents can understand and gets us away from education speak!
I was very disappointed to see such a misleading letter from CASE designed undermine the validity of the School Grade website. I hope that CASE members do their own homework.
I was hoping things had changed at CASE since nearly a decade ago they worked hard to stop or slow a new law and rules for standardizing state graduation and dropout reporting. It’s too bad that CASE has once again chosen to not support transparency on school performance. It’s really surprising for an organization representing school administrators that is committed to having evaluation tied to student performance data for teachers, to not be similarly inclined for schools and districts.
CASE is correct that School View is a very useful tool but frankly it is not that helpful in distinguishing schools from one another nor does it enable one to easily pull up data in an easy to read format. The cut points decided by School Grades and the Colorado state legislature are both arbitrary though I would guess that most would not agree with CDE that the top 60% of schools are all great schools.
What’s different about School Grades is that you can easily see how one school compares to all other schools in the state, which is difficult to do without downloading some monstrous spreadsheets from CDE. School Grades has already been a great resource given the quality of the data found there and the ease at which users can access it. It’s far from perfect but it’s moving in the right direction by providing all of us with useful performance data on schools.
School grades. How much money does it take and who gets that money to “rate” schools. Bill Owens created that mess to create new free loading organizations that could insert themselves into how your children are being educated.
There was a time when people had both good and bad teachers in the same school. Oh, you mean they still do? Those bad teachers were monitored by the other teachers and the Principals and the parents and students in the school. You could ask for a different teacher teaching the same class. That didn’t happen very often, but it did happen.
There were Social Workers, Nurses, paid assistants and volunteers. Those all went away when we had to put the money for their jobs into the pockets of the manipulators. Funny thing that. We didn’t need them until someone decided they could make money off of the public school system and at the same time make people think they needed charter schools to pick up the slack that seemed to open up all of a sudden.
I know my telling you who did what to whom isn’t going to make it possible to back-track this situation, but I do think awareness should make you not continue allowing the division of schools because of those lack-luster values from before.
If you can’t do something that will fit everyone, should you do something just to do something? Sometimes the hardest, most detailed way is the best way to secure success. People do not want to do the hard mental, work. It’s just easier to get on the band wagon and go.
Most of the people moving here come from California and Texas. Those are just two states that wallowed in this education mud and if they had not failed they would still be in California and Texas. That just means that because of all these “failed policies” all over the United States, they are part of breaking down the economy. Are you planing for all of those people coming here and from other states and where are you going to get the money from when they come?
The victims in all of this is the children of tomorrow.
Get the garbage out of the system and deal with reality.
Dev elope uniform testing systems and require simply that one stage be met before going on to another. If, somehow, you can forget belief systems and deal with facts, forget personal vendettas and personal agendas and just deal with getting the best for the kids, it will happen.
Sometimes you just have to get started and do it.
Still no significant ELL data on the website, eh? It takes a million dollars to completely discredit the hard work of English-learning kids and the teachers that support them, I suppose.
I am not sure what the dust up is all about. Grades have been a part of the education system since before any of us were born. Why is it okay to give grades to children based on…dare I say it…performance and testing, but not the adults? Quite a double standard.
And besides, I think the message of coloradoschoolgrades.com is the same message I would give my students as a teacher: Grades are about knowing where you stand and then charting a course for improvement; they tell you where you are, and then you decide where you are going.
Or you can whine, complain, tell me it’s unfair, stomp your feet, lobby me for a better grade, ball up your report card, and give me excuses while the students that actually want to get somewhere are getting busy to make sure their grades improve.
I taught in Florida where School Grades have been in place for quite some time. After spending several years as a “D” school our faculty rallied together, became intentional about our teaching, set goals (just like a student would do) and in one year we moved up to being a few points from a “B.” We could’ve cried a river about how 90% of our students were on free/reduced lunch, or how the charters and “A” and “B” schools (a student in a “D” or “F” school could transfer out in Florida) were taking all of our highest achievers, OR we could hitch up our britches and get to work. We chose the latter.
I couldn’t imagine working in an environment where we had no idea where we stood and where we were trying to go.
Why should we dumb down school and academic performance statistics to A-F for people who are too lazy to take a few minutes to learn what they are? School Grades is a political move pure and simple and the fact that they did not consult CASE before hand shows their underhanded intentions like so many of the candidates their supporters support. School Grades gets an F for those who need it simple.
Laura Boggs says: “High Schools where 93% of 10th graders are not and have not been proficient in Math for 3 years in a row. Does anyone believe that a high school with 93% of students in 10th grade not being proficient in Math for three years in a row deserves to be in a passing category?”
Is this, perchance, the school you refer to as “brown,” Ms. Boggs? That would be Jefferson Highs School, wouldn’t it? With 90% of students living at or below the poverty level, where 1/6 of students are homeless and 80% are minority, many of whom don’t speak english. Or how about the fact that 60% of the student population is transient, moving constantly from one school to the next as their parents move from job to job to put food on the table?
ColoradoSchoolGrades.com clearly doesn’t take any of that into account.
And let’s not forget, while Ms. Boggs stands on her platform that schools like Jefferson don’t deserve “passing grades” that she refused to stand and applaud or acknowledge the Jeffco Schools Office of Diversity when they received recognition at a school board meeting. (Hmmm…I’m sensing a pattern of, oh, I don’t know… racism…here.)
Wealthy and middle class, primarily white schools, where most students have everything they need (food, clothing, shelter, and parents not desperate for their next meal or looking for a nice bridge for their family to sleep under) are naturally going to score higher on tests and show steady improvement.
When kids come to school hungry or are concerned about whether or not they’ll have shelter when they sleep that night or can’t focus on homework because of hunger pains or worry that mom and dad won’t have a job tomorrow, well, you try taking CSAPs under those stressful conditions and see how well you do.
These are children, regardless of how they came to be here, and they deserve better than ColoradoSchoolGrades.com (or a racist school board member) giving their school a “C-” without looking at the overall picture.
ColoradoSchoolGrades.com is a farce. The very fact that the Independence Institute is listed as a partner on their website tells you this is a highly political, partisan “website.”
If you want to know how a school is really doing, get off your behind and pay them a visit. I guarantee an afternoon spent at Jefferson High School, talking with the principal, staff, and students there will open your eyes to the fact that test scores are only one of many ways to gauge how a school is performing. Never judge a book by its cover!
“Brown school?” What an utter embarrassment to Jeffco Schools.
Michele, I find it interesting that you would call someone a racist and then turn around and write the most disturbing thing on this post:
“Wealthy and middle class, primarily white schools, where most students have everything they need (food, clothing, shelter, and parents not desperate for their next meal or looking for a nice bridge for their family to sleep under) are naturally going to score higher on tests and show steady improvement”
You realize that comment says that poor children cannot score as high on tests as “middle class, primarily white…” kids can? As a former teacher of “poor” kids, that routinely brought extra food to share with my students that didn’t have lunch, and taught students that had everything they owned in their back packs, your comment disgusts me and it is exactly what is wrong in education today. Excuses. They help adults, but they don’t help students.
My kids appreciated the fact that I worked hard to help them, but I would never made excuses for them…even the ones in the most dire circumstances. They don’t need anyone feeling sorry for them, they need someone to expect more from them.
“There will be no free rides, no excuses. You already have two strikes against you: your name and your complexion. Because of these two strikes, there are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do. When you go for a job, the person giving you that job will not want to hear your problems; ergo, neither do I. You’re going to work harder here than you’ve ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is ganas. Desire.” –Jaime Escalante