The AYP: Top 10 List
- Ensures Tax Payer's that their investment in educational funding is used efficiently to attain the defined expectations.
- Provides the Community with a means to hold the school's and themselves accountable for the successful learning and development of the community's kids.
- Supports the Community's efforts to continually improve, and increase their property values and quality of citizens.
- Gives the School District a good and valid reason to turn down "low priority" program, training and curriculum requests.
- Promotes real "listening" by the Administration personnel regarding Teacher's education and workplace improvement ideas, because the goal won't be attained without significant efficiency gains and highly engaged teachers.
- Grants the Teacher authority to hold back or get special help for kids that are not academically capable.
- Reassures Parents that their child will be given every opportunity to learn. In fact, they will be pushed to grow and learn when necessary.
- Promotes development and use of methods and curriculum tailored to the unique needs of the Students.
- Prevents Students from getting an unearned "PASS". (ie may be awhile before they appreciate this one...)
- Improves likelihood that all Students will be academically capable at a threshold level upon graduation.
Anything I missed? Thoughts?
12 comments:
I most definitely WOULD embrace a metric that addressed your list. I don't believe for a minute that NCLB/AYP achieves that goal.
For many reasons which I'm sure you've heard before, it's a terribly flawed, arbitrary system, and 'it's the best we've got' isn't a good enough reason to allow it to take over our schools. Good schools--very good ones--are not 'failures' because a handful of kids need more support in order to achieve goals.
Fix it and use it, or discard it. I truly think we can do much better.
Hi Anonymous,
Please be a bit more specific, what do you want to fix about it?
Other than possibly having too high of expectations for Special Education and non-English speaking students. (and I recently learned that a number of Special Ed categories are opted out due to proficiency not being possible with their condition) I am not sure which other flaws you see in it.
Especially when the lucky students seem to have no problem meeting expectations... Seems like it might be correct and our paradigms may be flawed and arbitrary. Some reasons why the poor and unlucky kids can't be brought up to the threshold proficiency?
Thoughts?
I forgot there is one other oddity about AYP that I need to bring up in the name of full disclosure. I recently learned that a student can apply to multiple categories.
A middle class caucasian English speaking child with no special needs (ie lucky) will only show up in one category. Whereas a poor minority non-English speaking child with special needs (ie unlucky) will show up in 4 or 5 categories.
The fact is an unlucky kid not passing may influence meeting or failing AYP more than a lucky kid. Therefore folks better pay attention to the needs of the unlucky kids.
I'll leave whether this is good or bad to the reader's perception of reality and values.
It is amazing that it took a Republican President to get this pushed through. Given that it seems to be focused on helping the poor/unlucky kids. I thought that was supposed to be a Democrat/Liberal thing... Thoughts?
"# Ensures Tax Payer's that their investment in educational funding is used efficiently to attain the defined expectations."
I am a taxpayer and I don't feel reassured. Many schools don't receive federal funds so AYP provides no incentive for them to act efficiently. AYP encourages focusing on a narrow band of students who are at risk of failing AYP to the neglect of others. I think that's inefficient.
"# Provides the Community with a means to hold the school's and themselves accountable for the successful learning and development of the community's kids."
But I think an illusory one. For one thing, AYP standards change from year to year, something most people don't know. AYP standards don't provide what people expect from standards, a fixed point of reference against which to measure performance.
"# Supports the Community's efforts to continually improve, and increase their property values and quality of citizens."
To the extent people don't understand what AYP does and doesn't do, it contributes to a misleading view of what's going on in our schools.
"# Gives the School District a good and valid reason to turn down "low priority" program, training and curriculum requests."
Well it rather arbitrarily establishes a priority suggesting that only the skills tested by AYP are worth pursuing. But the fact is schools have all sorts of different priorities, thankfully, from which AYP serves mostly as a distraction. AYP is about politics, not the teaching of our kids.
"# Promotes real "listening" by the Administration personnel regarding Teacher's education and workplace improvement ideas, because the goal won't be attained without significant efficiency gains and highly engaged teachers."
When you listen, you hear all about those low priority items that AYP doesn't measure. I dearly love innovation, but innovation can be pretty much defined as that which diverts attention from the bread and butter mission of AYP standards.
"# Grants the Teacher authority to hold back or get special help for kids that are not academically capable."
AYP, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't add or detract from any teacher's authority in the classroom. It can however provide incentive to fudge the numbers resulting in a distorted and therefore useless view of what's going on in the classroom.
"# Reassures Parents that their child will be given every opportunity to learn. In fact, they will be pushed to grow and learn when necessary."
I feel no such reassurance. AYP encourages the focus on kids at risk for failing the tests. And it encourages the schools to neglect learning opportunities in areas not measured by AYP.
"# Promotes development and use of methods and curriculum tailored to the unique needs of the Students."
If it did, it would be for those kids who are on the bubble, very much encouraging the neglect of those who aren't.
"# Prevents Students from getting an unearned "PASS". (ie may be awhile before they appreciate this one...)"
AYP, to the extent it's high stakes, is high stakes for the schools, not for students, and not even for teachers very much. The sanction for failure to pass AYP is loss of federal funding, not denial of a passing grade or ultimately a diploma.
"# Improves likelihood that all Students will be academically capable at a threshold level upon graduation."
At the end of the day, I don't think AYP has that much effect on what schools do. They put a little bit of time into it, they hold the equivalent of a pep rally, but once they are done, schools pretty much go back to teaching the broad based curriculum we expect from them but most of which has little to do with what AYP measures.
Jon,
As I have asked for before, instead of throwing rocks at the systems the government and citizens have chosen.
What are your solutions and ideas for ensuring almost all kids reach a base threshold in core academic performance?
While focusing on all the other "important" things?
While living within the allocated funding/budget that was approved by the citizens?
I am looking forward to hearing some good and forward thinking ideas that we can act on....
Jon,
By the way, of course I disagree with most of your comments since I believe in PDCA and the power of perceptions/marketing to change behavior.
The reality from my perspective is that the RAS admin is very motivated to act and listen based on AYP results. Not because of the Title 1 funding stick, but because of the bad press and impending loss of lucky students and funding.
Only time will tell.
"What are your solutions and ideas for ensuring almost all kids reach a base threshold in core academic performance?"
Better schools, better teaching, a greater commitment from the community to quality schools.
I should note that I am not alone in finding it difficult to find ways to ensure that all kids reach a base threshold in core academic performance. Congress in creating a system that simply tests children rather than addressing the issues you raise was ducking the question as well. Testing has as much effect on learning as thermometers do on the weather.
There are all sorts of ideas out there for improving education. KIPP schools have had success. So has the Harlem Children Zone. However among the problems with these sorts of programs is that they require increased resources, both in terms of money and in terms of commitment from both parents and kids. With respect to Robbinsdale 281, I don't think the problem is a shortage of good ideas. I think it's more a problem of finding the most effective one both in terms of impact on individual students, and groups of students in general.
Its a sort of generic criticism that public schools are monopolies, and are therefore not creative or innovative. This is a nice theory, but rarely true in practice. Where public schools are concerned, I have found that they are endlessly creative and innovative to a point that many parents find disturbing. Some of those parents respond by searching out back to basic curricula as a shelter from what might be described as the proneness to fads that sometimes even I will admit sometimes afflict public education.
"I believe in PDCA and the power of perceptions/marketing to change behavior."
I do too, and that's why I believe it's so important to align perceptions with underlying realities.
"The reality from my perspective is that the RAS admin is very motivated to act and listen based on AYP results."
I believe that the RAS administration is very motivated to improve schools in a lot of different ways. But my guess is that AYP results don't play a big role in that respect because so many other schools fail them. Unless the system is changed, all eligible schools will eventually fail AYP, and so that won't be a factor in comparative evaluation of schools.
With that said...
Do we improve the education system quickly to meet the current documented world class expectations?
Or do we lower the documented expectations to meet our poor and unequitable current reality?
I still vote for the first, and think it will take additional funding, pruning of offerings and some significant educational system changes to get there. This will require change by schools, teachers, administration, parents and citizens/government.
Now everyone knows what John & Jon think. What do you think ? The microphone is open for your thoughts....
"Do we improve the education system quickly to meet the current documented world class expectations?"
I am certainly in favor of improving the educational system, and in ways not limited by documented expectations, whatever they might be. By the way, I don't see NCLB standards as expectations. I know for a fact that within a few years, the standards will be so high, no one will be expected to meet them. For myself, there was nothing unexpected about the most recent results.
Here's a good take on one reason why I think NCLB is deeply flawed. Yes, it is capable of boosting scores (and according to some, acheivement) among the low average and average learners. But the high achievers are not coming close to their potential as they tread water in a teach-to-the-test environment.
Your thoughts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/opinion/28petrilli.html?em
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