Re: NYTimes.com: Courage? Follow the Yellow Brick Road

[aburke5054@aol.com]

----Original Message-----
From: gbracey@erols.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:21:32 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [arn-l] NYTimes.com: Courage? Follow the Yellow Brick Road


This page was sent to you by: gbracey@erols.com Message from sender:
 Art, Mike Winerip column today is about a school doing some great 
stuff, but flunking NCLB only because it was short 7 kids on test day. 
All it"s subgroups passed everything, but the whole school is declared 
a failure. If NCLB is an attempt to get schools to improve achievement, 
why does it have such a goofy, silly, loony--nasty--provision as 
this????
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 ...Ms. Senechal sees a school that takes poor children — 100 percent 
get free lunches — and provides opportunity. This is why she has no 
faith in the federal No Child Left Behind law, which labels I.S. 223 a 
failing school. While I.S. 223 students in every racial and ethnic 
subgroup made their testing goals in English, math and science, the law 
requires 95 percent to be tested, and on the English exam, the school 
was 7 students short. "That makes us a failing school?" she said. 
"Nonsense. Remarkable things happen at this school." ...
 
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 Pure nonsense. In the first place, NCLB might be the reason that the 
223 kids met their testing goals and that remarkably good things are 
happening in that school. In the second place, NCLB does not label 
schools as "failing". It requires states to identify schools that need 
improvement and provide the improvement they need. Claiming that "needs 
improvement" is the same as "failing" is an exercise in silliness, if 
not outright disinformation, and continuing to claim that is a 
disservice to the public. In the third place, the requirement to test 
all kids was put in to prevent schools from sequestering kids on test 
day who might not pass. Does a school where kids are meeting the 
improvement goals, but that is not testing enough kids need 
improvement? Does NCLB require states to mess around with things that 
are working well? No way. (At least, not in my opinion).

Art
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