Re: AYP celebrations

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Nowhere in NCLB is there a requirement for 10 percent annual 
improvement.

The whole purpose of NCLB is to make sure that schools focus on all 
children.  Standards, tests, and AYP are surely imperfect, but they can 
be an important mechanism for advancing the educational equity that is 
the heart of NCLB.  We should expect far better out of public education 
than the "game of looking good rather than being good."  We should 
expect and demand better today, the day we celebrate Martin Luther 
King's birthday, and every day.   For people who cling to the delusion 
that AYP is a tool to destroy public education, there is simply no hope.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Patterson <patterna@gvsu.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:24 pm
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" <taunar@plateautel.net> 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" <dkeikoa@hawaii.rr.com>
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>
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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