Re: AYP celebrations

[PRISCILLA GUTIERREZ <pgutpgut@msn.com>]

The folks who brought us NCLB and AYP are quite capable in math and fully aware that the goal of 10% improvement each year subsequently leading to 100% proficiency is not achievable.  But it sure made them sound like they gave a crap about the disenfranchised who were being left behind by all those bad teachers.  

Ironically, it is precisely the sped kids and the ELLS who routinely cause a school to not make AYP, which is why school districts have become quite creative in either suppressing their scores or in elminating them from the scene, one way or the other.

To boot, ASCD is reporting a new experiment in DC where 14,000 plus students will attend Saturday classes in an attempt to improve test scores.  Note the goal isn't to improve learning, but rather the almighty test score.  Or should I say the almighty dollar that goes into the pocket of the testing companies.

No other profession in this country utilizes a single, one shot test to evaluate progress or success.  Lawyers use a body of evidence to win a case.  Doctors use a body of evidence to diagnose and create a course of treatment.
Football coaches use a body of evidence to create a winning season.  Even mechanics use a body of evidence to diagnose car problems and get them running smooth again.  Why is it that teachers are expected to complacently sit back and allow a single test to be the final word on their effectiveness in the classroom?  And if you speak out, you are accused of low expectations, laziness, or being a bigot.  What is also interesting is that every single one of those professions, in light of rising evidence that something isn't working, would abandon the course and try something else.  Not in education.  We are expected to stick with the program even as our students fall by the wayside or are shoved off to the wayside because of the test.  Why?  Because when the whole stinking system goes down the tubes, we can easily be blamed as the scapegoats.

The worse part of it all is that our students are internalizing that school isn't about learning for the real world, or to become an intelligent adult who can solve problems and think critically.  Educational policy is teaching them that school is for test prep and taking tests.  Once you pass 'em, you don't need the info anymore...so just be good little proletarian workers and do what we tell you on the assembly line.  We won't need thinking professionals anyway - all of those jobs will soon be outsourced to other countries with cheap labor...









Priscilla Gutierrez
Outreach Specialist
New Mexico School for the Deaf

...change is inevitable, growth is optional...


> Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:24:22 -0500
> From: patterna@gvsu.edu
> To: arn-l@interversity.org
> Subject: Re: [arn-l] AYP celebrations
>
> The really inane thing about being on the dreaded AYP "list" is that now even so called top schools are failing to make annual yearly progress because they can't improve the required 10 percent each year. Someone in the Bush administration forgot how to do math. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 10 percent gain each year is impossible. In some schools the only reason why they didn't make AYP is because of the special ed students. Under NCLB, all but the severely impaired have to take the tests, even if they can't read. And, non-english speaking students have to take the tests, too, even if they can't read the tests.
>
> What has happened in some schools is that special education and at risk students have been shoved out--sent to alternative schools or simply kicked out. In other schools, kids who aren't likely to pass the test are retained the year before a significant test is taken. Then they skip a grade, into another grade where a significant test is not given. It becomes a game of looking good rather than being good.
>
> Nancy
>
> Nancy Patterson, PhD
> Literacy Studies Program Chair
> College of Education
> Grand Valley State University
> 920 Eberhard Center
> 301 W. Fulton
> Grand Rapids, Michigan 49504
> 616-331-6226
> patterna@gvsu.edu
> http://faculty.gvsu.edu/patterna
>
>>>> "Tauna Rogers"  1/21/2008 11:25 AM>>>
> Diane,
>
> My .02 is that you are right on the money. Celebrating making AYP serves to
> legitimize a mechanism designed to discredit and ultimately destroy public
> education, although I can easily understand how relieved the schools must be
> to get off the dreaded list. Keep up the good fight. They may mean well but
> celebrating making AYP sends exactly the wrong message. Stick to your guns,
> you're doing the right thing!
>
> Tauna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Diane Aoki" 
> To: 
> Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 2:28 AM
> Subject: [arn-l] AYP celebrations
>
>
>> Please help me out on this. I had a recent outburst at a union meeting
>> about
>> plans to honor schools that made AYP after being in restructuring. This is
>> how I feel: Making AYP is the result of many factors that have nothing to
>> do
>> with the teachers at that school and the quality of their teaching. These
>> factors could be: whether or not that school is large enough to be
>> required
>> to count the subgroups; whether or not that school focused their time and
>> resources on the test at the expense of other subjects - "teaching to the
>> test;" the schools may have focused on the "bubble kids," at the expense
>> of
>> the others who are too low or too high to make a difference on the test.
>> Those are my main points - are there others?
>>
>> My reasons for being upset are: The NCLB reform program of which AYP is an
>> integral aspect is not meant to improve public education, but to destroy
>> it,
>> so we need to be critical of it. By celebrating AYP, we are saying that
>> NCLB
>> is working. By celebrating AYP, we are sending a message out to the other
>> schools, if they can do it, you can too. But the way it is set up (100%
>> proficiency by 2014), we will either all fail, or all be Stepford schools,
>> shaped into such by private companies who got lucrative contracts to do
>> this. By celebrating AYP, we are being divisive, setting the AYP schools
>> in
>> opposition to the non-AYP schools, a heirarchy based on test scores that
>> don't necessarily mean better schools. By not recognizing the truth of it,
>> we are blurring our vision, which should be focused on, what IS a quality
>> school, how CAN we take back our profession, how can WE be the determiners
>> of what a good school is and celebrate that.
>>
>> In the room of about 11 people, only 3 seemed to get what I was saying.
>> And
>> these were union leaders. They said things like, "we need to be more
>> positive," "it gives us hope," "it's all we have."
>>
>> Please help me out. I need to know if I am off my rocker or on the money.
>> Is
>> what I am saying so off base? Or is it just one of those things that are
>> hard to be honest about, so people would rather cling to the illusion.
>>
>>
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