Measuring Student Achievement Using NAEP Standards: Yikes is Right, Chasin'!

Click on the link below to see the article that Chasinthenews blog has included in its entirety on her blog. It took me on a trip down memory lane and it wasn't a delightful experience. More than two years ago, I wrote an article about the origin of "proficient and advanced" on the WKCE which I learned at a seminar at the WASB convention in 2008. Basically, they gathered a bunch of "experts" in a room and gave them four bookmarks labelled "Minimum, Basic, Proficient and Advanced." They were instructed to place each bookmark at the minimum knowledge base position in a book with increasingly difficult content for each subject for each grade tested with the WKCE. Naturally, everybody's marker spot varied, so they all collaborated on the best placement for these markers. Then they found out that only 10% of Wisconsin students would be considered proficient or advanced with the bar where the experts thought it should be (translation: where the curriculum says it should be). As this would suddenly impinge on their federal funds, they "dumbed down" the categories so that an acceptable number of students were designated proficient or advanced.  The cynical amongst us would say that the re-derived criteria  is "if you have a pulse."

Now, it's been suggested that I am more than a little cynical myself (NO! It's true). And I may have been heard to say, "It's just a little weird that over 50 percent of our high school graduation class graduates with honors." My personal favorite is, "My kid's GPA is over 3.95 and she's 13/150. My GPA was 3.8 and I was 6/400. I smell grade inflation." There are concrete differences in how high school grades were handled then (prehistory, according to my kids) and now:

1-Everybody got exactly the same amount of time to complete a task. The test was done when time was called . Either you were done or your weren't. Nobody got to come in after school to finish a lab, or complete a test. It's my understanding that college is still run this way. When I discussed this with Principal Everson, he said, "What is better, making sure the student understands the material or having some rigid anachronistic program in place that doesn't teach?" I asked him if he seriously thought parents should shell out thousands of dollars to send their kid to college only to have him or her flunk out because you want to get all touchy-feely-educatory and not teach kids what the realities of college life will be.

2- There are few if any re-dos, either in college or in real life. If you screw up the deadline, your boss will NOT care about your excuse. Having told many an undergraduate my mantra when I taught at University, "I don't care what your excuse is, the homework is due when I say so and the quizzes will be final," I have routinely been taken aback by the myriad chances my kids have to improve their test scores. Math is the most egregious subject, where they get not one, not two but THREE tests per unit to show subject matter mastery. FOR GOD'S SAKE PEOPLE! Who are we testing here? The teacher or the student? ARRGH!

3- People weren't afraid to take challenging classes and "ruin" their grade point average, because you had to have certain classes to get into college. Period, end of discussion. "Underwater basket weaving 101" (what we called "cake" courses back then) wasn't an option.

If your teaching environment does not prepare your students for wherever they will end up, you aren't doing anybody any favors. In fact, this is the whole reason I started this blog. Charles Kettering's quote, "High Achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation" got me thinking about creating my own blog to address Excellence and/or our district's lack thereof. As I was traipsing through my archive to find my original post and writing on the abysmal state of WKCE testing, I came upon one of my first posts. I discussed that one of my last official acts as a board member was to vote against both the student handbooks, which allow a 1.5 GPA for co-curricular participation, and raising the GPA requirement for NHS membership from 3.5 to 3.6 in policy. Apparently I asked at the board meeting if anybody but me saw the irony in the fact that they wanted to make it HARDER to be a member of NHS while having essentially no standard for co-curricular participation? Why, I went on, did they want to selectively stick it to the smart kids AGAIN? The only person with the gonads to speak to the issue was Everson, who said "Until we standardize our grading scale, it's meaningless to link anything with GPA." Touche. However, it's been two years since that was stated and I still don't think there's been any huge standardization that has happened. If anybody knows otherwise, I'd love to hear about it. From where I sit, they're still floundering in mediocrity. We don't need the NAEP to tell us that.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/proposal-gets-serious-about-raising-the-bar-for-student-achievement-rv3vges-138276089.html

Girls Swim Team Co-Op!

Check out my article in The Review about a Girls Swim Team Co-op with Edgerton starting next year!

Madison Could Raise Levy Again Next Year to Fund 4K

Click on the link to see how Madison is planning to close a 12.4 million dollar shortfall in their budget next year. This is about 4 percent of their expected revenue. This makes Evansville's 1.6 million dollar deficit look like a pittance. As a percentage of the whole budget, however, Evansville's 8.7 percent deficit is more than double Madison's.

To summarize strategies to close the gap:

1-Get rid of crappy, over priced insurance plan and secure staff contributions up to 15% of other programs available.-5 million dollars. Check.

2-Cut the jobs they put into place with stimulus funds, which they were told was an unwise use of funds in the first place or fund them with increased property tax (HAH!), renegotiate non-union contracts, implement energy efficient projects. -3.2 million dollars all told. Check.

3-Use the fund balance or increase property tax to fund 4K.  -4.4 million REALLY?!?!?

At first I was pretty stunned by this last bit, but then read the article in depth. Turns out Madison School District, citizens of which complain loudly and often about their property taxes, does NOT levy to the extent allowed by law. The preliminary forecast for next year projects the district to be under-levied by 14.5 million dollars. Despite the fact that the levy increased by 4 million dollars last year. These people have been seriously under-levied lately. Evansville is not so lucky.

Now some historical background with our convoluted school funding formula is necessary to really understand the following twisted logic.  Our magnanimous leaders in Madison have generously agreed to increase the state aide by 50 dollars a kid next year (after cutting it by 550 bucks a kid this year. Thanks Scott! May I have some more?). Another 50 bucks a kid will be available to those districts who levy to the full authority next year. Apparently that legislation is worded such that the total levy must be within 5 percent of the maximum allowed or something similar. Because if Madison increases their total levy so that it is 10.4 million dollars or less below the maximum allowable levy, they will qualify for the additional 50 dollars per kid aid, which is worth $1.4 million in state aid to such a huge district. You have to know that that $1.4 million of additional revenue has consequences down the road, so a decision to tax more to get aid now and in the future is in the best interests of the Madison School District.

I have often thought that the Madison School District has a bonehead in charge of the business office. A few years ago, right after the economy took a dive, Madison forged ahead and wrote their budget based on the status quo increase in state aid seen in previous boon years. They ended up having to cut 15 million dollars that year and being all indignant about it. Little tiny Evansville, with fearless Deb Olsen at the business office helm, wrote a very conservative budget that year TAKING INTO ACCOUNT the general economic malaise and recommended cut in state aid. We actually realized an increase in the budget once it was finalized in October.

Now I read here that Madison hired staff using their stimulus funds. I was on the Evansville board when the district got the stimulus funds. They specifically recommended these funds not be used for recurring expenses. Like Salaries?!?!?! So now Madison has to decide "whether to keep them and find another funding source or cut the positions."  Evansville bought a new wheelchair van. Among other things. They did use some funds to hire a temporary special ed teacher at TRIS. But it was clearly noted as a temporary position. Hmmm. In retrospect, there is probably a lack of good communication among the administrator, the board and the business manager in Madison.


http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/nerad-madison-schools-facing-million-deficit-in-coming-budget-year/article_dce73d70-43d0-11e1-97c1-0019bb2963f4.html

"Candidate Forum" Post is from Last Year...

There have been a lot of hits on my "Candidates Forum" post from last year's school board election. Just a reminder that this is last year's candidates and I plan to post a similar summary when my series this year is complete at the end of March (March 21). Thanks for reading my blog though.

School Board Meetings of the whole Agenda

Click on the link to see the agenda for the meetings of the whole tomorrow at 6:30 PM. Swim Team co-op on the agenda. Yeah!!! Of course, I'll be there as an unbiased observer... There are several other topics on the agenda that may interest you, so click and see and attend if you're so inclined.


http://www.ecsdnet.org/documents/Board%20Meetings/2011-2012/January/January%2023%20agenda.pdf

So now they're going to test kindergartners...

Click on the link below to see what our fearless leader is proposing now. So, Walker wants to reinvent the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, this time figuring out how to test kindergarteners in reading? That's my take on this. OK... Some of the ideas are good, looking for achievable measurable parameters to monitor. However, when one really thinks about what is objective and what is subjective, much cannot be evaluated using purely objective criteria. Therein lies the rub. If a teacher is missing the "soft skills" how much energy should a school district invest in that person before deciding to give them the boot instead of letting them get tenure? Frankly, some people never develop the personality necessary to become an outstanding teacher: Humility, joy at seeing the student pass you in speed and content, persistence in covering the material until each child has grasped the basics and can build the next learning blocks on them and satisfaction in the knowledge that you had some small part to play in that child's education.

Then there's the whole business of holding teachers and principals accountable for poor test scores. Learning starts in the womb. It continues the moment you hold your precious bundle for the first time. Every interaction you have with that baby is a learning experience for both of you, more so for the babe. If a parent plops that babe in front of the boob tube for 5 years and then blames the public schools because they have produced an illiterate child who can't figure out how to read by grade 2, where's the parental accountability in all this?  How can the schools be held accountable for that kind of parent who presents the schools with a child whose potential to learn has been squelched at the hands of the morons who "raised" it?

Then there's the nature of bulk learning in this day in age. If the poor kid hasn't had it's love of learning extinguished by it's parents, elementary school will often finish the job. Especially of that child is a boy. Have you ever noticed the difference in the learning process of a boy compared to a girl? Granted, I'm not going to try to extract how much of this is innate and how much has been imposed by our sexist societal norms. But if those norms produce boys who, by and large, learn best my exercising their large muscle groups and with hands on activity and girls learn best through collaborative and cooperative models and our schools teach by rote and lecture, emphasizing collaboration and team effort, which gender do you think is going to excel in public school?  Why do you think girls outnumber boys on college campuses these days? It's not because boys have suddenly become stupid. Their learning style does not mesh well with what is expected of them in public school. Their learning style DOES mesh well with behavior that usually lands them in trouble, setting them up for a lot of time in the principal's office. How can they learn when they are spending all their energy suppressing their natural impulse to jump around so they don't get sent to the principal's office?

Well, that's my rant. I certainly never want to see the days again when girls were told that they were not worthy of a college education because they were only going to become wives and mothers and it was a waste of a spot in college, like my mother and mother-in-law had to endure. But there really has to be some kind of happy medium it would seem. The answer lies in differentiated instruction, wherein each child is taught to his or her own strength. If a kid needs motion to learn, give him or her motion. If a kid needs as many math problems as you can throw at her, bring it on. Just stop providing the mediocre pablum and challenge each kid so they reach their potential whether they had parents who parked them in front of the boob tube from day 1 or read to them in the womb.

http://host.madison.com/highlights-of-gov-walker-s-school-reform-package/article_c4cf0c8c-42f3-11e1-8679-001871e3ce6c.html

Good Grief This is Crazy

Click on the link to read about a disturbing new trend in superintendents job-hopping to increase salaries which has forced some districts to write in bonuses in the contracts in order to retain their superintendents and maintain continuity. Evansville is undergoing a superintendent search. The cost is high, but worth it from the perspective of using a firm that has contacts in the industry and able to find the right person that their homework tells them district stakeholders are looking for. We country bumpkins aren't used to Superintendents who consider themselves like CEOs. Hell, I'm still not sure where the CEOs get off considering themselves so far above the rest of humanity.

I know the article makes that analogy, and truly effective superintendents may in fact be like CEOs. I disagree with the premise that anybody should have to pay bribery money to keep good employees employed. I have never been of the opinion that anybody deserves such "golden handcuffs" as they're dubbing it in the article. They are paid handsomely for their work. A friend of ours manages a plant with a similar sized budget and gets paid 20% less than our superintendent, has a much less lucrative retirement plan and pays a HECK of a lot more for his dental and health packages. And isn't paid with taxpayer funds.

So, I hope and pray this ridiculous practice doesn't make its way to little Evansville. Paying extortion so people won't job hop is obtuse. Among other words I could use but won't...