The 2008-2009 school year will be over in two weeks. The students at the high-achieving school where I work provided the correct statistical numbers last year and the year before and back to the beginning of No Child Left Behind.
API-over 800 (excellent!) and AYP, percentages far above the benchmark needed to reach the goal of all students reading at grade level by 2014. Way to go!
So far, none of the school’s planning days have been cut from the distasteful budget trimming that teachers will see next year, once the real loss of funds in California is determined. In fact, the teachers at my school just completed a staff development day of curriculum planning for next year. With all that diagnosis and change, however, some students still aren’t going to be helped.
I was thinking about this at lunch the other day when one teacher lamented that a talented student in her class moved (an unusual occurrence at my school) just before state testing began, joking that the undoubtedly high scores from that child would not be included in the statistical manipulation that leads to AYP percentages or API score for our school. The study and practice that child absorbed, determined to do well, will show up somewhere, for some other school.
That humorous plaint, told to me time and again by teachers with far more experience than I have, brought to mind the boy who entered my class in February from another California school. It was soon apparent that he could neither read on 4th grade level nor had he learned the math concepts for 4th grade.
In fact, on the records sent from his former school, the child had missed days and days of school, and his parent did not, and could not, support his school work. He had trouble with kids on the playground as well as in the classroom, though he finally began to settle down.
In May he took the exam and then moved, nobody knows where, although the principal contacted the home and finally visited only to be met by the adult brother who did not know where the family went.
Here’s the child that is lost to the system. Who knows if he will ever receive county family support services, school services, health services? Here’s the child who is certainly hurt by the dire straits to be endured until the state resolves its fiscal problems. Many of the 6.3 million school age children in California face these obstacles and they’re too young or isolated to even know what’s happening.
My school is lucky. Few transient students enter and leave during the year.
But what about my boy? I can’t imagine where he will end up.
Tags: high-achieving, staff development, state fiscal problems, transience