Re: Fw: garbage

[Deborah Meier <dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG>]

Gerald, your story re Owen school's miracle reminds me of so many similar
tales.  Some years ago I attended an event celebrating an elementary school
in California with a 99% attendance record. I contemplated what that would
mean.  Assuming a school of 600 (it was actually a bit larger) that would
mean 6 kids absent a day--on average.  Day after day. Given that such a
school had at least 25 classrooms that would mean that 20 classes had
perfect attendance every day.  Actually it turned out that in California at
that time no child was labeled absent if his/her family sent in a note, or
agreed on the phone that there was a good reason for being absent.
Absenteeism was essentially another word for truancy. An elementary school
with a truancy rate of 1% is a bit less spectacular.

NYC, a few years back,  posted two remarkably high scores in schools with
largely free-lunch populations--proof again, the reporter noted, that good
leadership can perform miracles.  Upon investigation (by me) it turned out
that both miracles were the result of the schools changing its student
population; becoming schools for the gifted.  Which meant that the kids
whose scores we were now supposed to be impressed with were those accepted
on the basis of their high test scores.

etc etc.

Of course, it leads one to be suspicious of all schools whose "outcomes"
seem impressive.  Which is a shame.  But healthy skepticism is merited.
And I never felt surprised when folks were suspicious of the results we had
at CPESS--although they weren't in the area of test scores.

No one in the field of medicine (or science, which we're told is what these
tests represent) would accept such outlandish surprise results as glibly as
the educational world and its education reporters do.  A doctor or hospital
that claimed in its press releases to have substantially different
"outcomes" for patients with cancer might have a harder time than schools
do claiming their miracle cures, ditto new drugs on the market, etc.  But
every reading program and test prep program comes with guarantees of
miracle cures and we all say "ho hum."   The existence of your sane and
tough and incessant and everlasting and tireless persistence in nailing
this nonsense is such a blessing.  Again, thanks.

Deb



Such

>Kenneth Cooper, author of today's Washington Post story about the Owen
>School has responded to a couple of my statements in my commentary of
>earlier today.  My response to his response follows immediately below, but
>you can scroll down in order to read his first.
>
>JB
>
>
>-----
>
>Mr Cooper:
>
>
>You are right.  You didn't use the word "percentile" in your story and you
>didn't report any.  Without realizing it, I set a trap.  The second
>paragraph of the two page
>vignette on Owen School in the Heritage "No Excuses" report from Heritage
>says "Last year's 5th graders, for example, posted a mean score at the 98th
>percenitle in reading and the 90th in math."  I assumed you didn't read the
>whole report, but thought you might at least have covered the vignette for
>the Owen school which is less than two pages long.  If you read those
>figures, I reasoned, you, as a journalist, should be suspicious.  But I
>guess you didn't read them.
>
>The point is NOT that poor black kids in Detroit can't outscore blondies in
>Grosse Pointe.  The point is: NO school scores as high as Owen.  It's one
>thing to have a substantial proportion at the 98th, another thing to have
>that be the school average.  That is virtually impossible*.  Given that
>there is only one rank above 98, an average of 98 means that virtually no
>one scored below the 96th percentile.  If we assume that 50% of the students
>hit the 99th, 20% the 98th, 20% the 97 and 10% the 96th, that yields an
>average of 98.1.  That doesn't happen.  Anywhere.
>
>Take Fairfax County, Virginia.  A high-scoring district.  Within this
>high-scoring district, there is Thomas Jefferson School of Science and
>Technology which creams the best of the best--of the 8581 juniors in
>high-scoring Fairfax in 1997, only 391, 4.6%, attended TJ.  The admissions
>people at TJ start with a high-scoring group of kids and then impose a
>selectivity more severe than at outstrips Harvard or Stanford.  It means
>that on average, just under 7 kids from each Fairfax elementary school wind
>up at TJ.  Yet TJ kids get only to the 91st percentile in reading.  They do
>manage manage the 98th in science and 99th in math, the primary subjects on
>which they are selected.
>
>At the 5th grade level, where Owen reported 98th, none of the 131 Fairfax
>elementary schools with a grade 5 even comes close to 98th percentile.  The
>closest is 89th and the district average is 77th.  I repeat, it is not
>reasonable for ANY elementary school, or any school that does not select the
>absolute best of the best to have an AVERAGE at the 98th percentile.
>
>I'll believe the results at Owen only if you can get me permission to go in
>with a standardized norm-referenced test of my choice, unknown to the
>school, and my own test administrators (Carter's report says that the school
>itself provided the test data for the achievement test, suspect in iteself).
>
>As for the Heritage Foundation sponsorship, yes I'm bothered.  The "Mission
>Statement" of Heritage says its "mission is to formulate and promote
>conservative public policies...."  That policy about public schools is to
>get rid of them.  As I noted in my "rant", the Vice President for
>Educational Affairs at Heritage says that Carter's data make the case for
>abolition.  Can you really expect a disinterested piece of research from
>such an institution?  I trust reports from Heritage about as much as those
>from the KGB.  There is a name for someone who would accept a Heritage
>report at face value, and it isn't "journalist."
>
>
>GWB
>
>*This statement is true when speaking in terms of pupil results as Cooper
>and Carter do.  Obviously, if we were using schools as the unit of
>comparison, then the highest scoring schools would fall at the 99th
>percentile--of schools.  But Cooper's and Carter's data are reported in
>reference to pupil norms, not school norms.
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <cooperk@washpost.com>
>To: Gerald W. Bracey <gbracey@erols.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 12:46 PM
>Subject: Re: garbage
>
>
>>
>> I am going to violate my personal rule about ignoring your rantings to
>> correct a substantial misstatement you have made about my story on Owen
>> School. Nowhere in my does the word "percentile" appear. The Michigan
>> Educational Assessment Program is a criterion-referenced test, not a
>> norm-referenced one. When I write of percentages of Owen students who
>> "passed" different MEAP tests, that means their performance was rated
>> either as "satisfactory" or "proficient" by the state of Michigan.
>>
>> And you make a wholly falacious presumption that my story rests solely on
>> Samuel Casey Carter's research for the Heritage Foundation report, whose
>> sponsorship seems to trouble you so much. I'll also let you deal with your
>> own presumption that poor black kids in inner city Detroit couldn't
>> possibly outperform affluent white kids in Grosse Point, Mich. or Cherry
>> Creek, Colo. without some sort of fraud being involved. There's a name for
>> that sort of thinking, and I think you know what it is.
>>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
>to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.