Apple, Cherry, or Student

One of the teacher blogs I read posted recently about a student who was leaving, and it hit home.

My school has a lot of transiency. Only 75% of the kids who were here at the beginning of the year are still here.

It's rough. We're considered a failing school, and we're giving the kids so much this year. The corporation has spent tons of Title I money and stimulus funding to get these kids extra help. We have a student-teacher ratio of something like 8:1 in a high-poverty school. We have an RTI specialist, a reading coach, a math coach, and a specialist to come in and help us with a restructuring process, including a curriculum and assessment calendar. We have a certified teacher or a full-time aide as an assistant in each classroom. We have added an hour of instructional time each day and an extra summer session for struggling students.

And not only have we lost 25% of the kids already, but I have 4 or 5 kids telling me they're moving over the summer. Last year almost half of our student population changed from August 2008 to August 2009.

I know that could change, but it's still somewhat disheartening. I hate seeing these kids leave. I miss them, of course- miss seeing how they're doing, miss being able to teach them, miss talking to them each day- but there's more.

I am sad that they won't be at our school anymore, because some of the kids leaving are the students who can really benefit from the extra attention and extra learning opportunities we have here. One of my students who started out reading almost two grade levels behind has made a ton of growth this year, but will be moving to a new school next year where I doubt she'll be able to get the same amount of individual and small-group time that she needs to catch up. Another student acts out, but as you get to know him you realize that there's something deeper. When asked what he did over Spring Break, he looked away and wouldn't respond. He rarely came to school clean and well-taken-care-of. I hope that a teacher with a bigger class and less resources is able to see the need behind his misbehavior.

It's also frustrating to me because I see our efforts going out the door. We have poured so much into these kids. I'm happy to help the kids, and I would do it even if I knew they'd be moving soon, but we are a school with a reputation of "failing." Our test scores are low. AYP has not been met. And there are kids that we have worked, and worked, and worked with, and they have grown incredibly.

And they're gone. While we took the test this year, many of those students weren't here anymore. Their test scores weren't here to show how much we have taught them. I'm happy they have learned, regardless, but it would be nice to see our school get credit in the public eye for the amazing strides we have made.

I'll post more about this later, but it's so disheartening to see the teachers at my school labeled as "bad" when the turnover of students is so consistent and so high.

If a sports team had to lose half of their team each year and put in players who may or may not be ready for pro level and hadn't been chosen by the team, they would never be expected to win.

But I'm not in sports. And as frustrating as transiency can be, I'm glad for the education we have given the kids in our class this year. Especially the 5 kids who have moved (out of 16 in our class). I hope they are doing okay.

My Turn to Tattle

I have recently gotten really into reading other teacher blogs. It's amazing to me to see how similar things are in so many areas of the country right now. Teachers are struggling with the same things.

I recently read in The Elementary Educator:

As No Child Left Behind’s magical year of 2014 draws near, where an impossible 100% of students must be proficient in math and reading in every school throughout the United States, states continue to redefine “proficiency,” reducing the cut scores needed to pass the state tests to astoundingly low levels.

In Michigan, for example, third graders who answered 19 out of 45 questions correctly on the math section of the MEAP (our state standardized test) were labeled “proficient.” 19 out of 45 is approximately 42%, which already sounds pathetic, but it gets worse: this test was multiple choice. Not only that, but there were only three answer choices per question!

Let’s analyze that for a moment: third grade students in Michigan who knew the right answers to 6 of the 45 math questions, then guessed with average success on the remaining 39 questions (getting 13/39 correct), are labeled proficient. Not only that, but third graders are tested in the fall of third grade, and the test only covers material from the previous grade. So third graders who understood a mere 13.3% of what was taught in second grade and had average luck when guessing on the other 86.7% of the questions are considered proficient by the State of Michigan.

Isn't it astounding?

I knew this kind of thing was happening, but someone putting it all out like that, into numbers, makes me cringe. This is what the national government is encouraging. THIS is the impact of No Child Left Behind.

NCLB is good in some ways. It encourages accountability, and forces schools to look not only at the big picture, but also at important subgroups to make sure that there aren't gaps in the education they provide.

I get frustrated, though, sitting in a "failing" school. It is not fair for the national government's policy to treat us differently than other schools with our levels of success just because our state has refused to drop standards.

Our standards are considered some of the most rigorous in the country, and our standardized test is certainly not passed by 97-100% of students, like the Michigan test.

Let me be clear: I am glad the state of Indiana is holding itself to high standards even though No Child Left Behind in its current state doesn't mandate it. It is frustrating to me, however, that we are facing sanctions that other schools don't face, even if their students are at the same levels as ours.

I strongly support President Obama and Arne Duncan when they say that every state should have standards and tests with similar rigor. I don't believe that National Standards or a National Test are necessarily the way to do that, but I do believe that someone at the national level needs to be looking at each state's standards and tests to determine if they are truly measuring proficiency.