Archive for the ‘Academic Performance Index’ Category

School Starts So Soon

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

The school year has begun one week earlier than last year. San Francisco, San Jose, and my district are starting in order to cover the curriculum standards before the school days zip by and state testing looms before us.

Not that I haven’t been in school most of the summer. If one wants a Master’s degree, summer is the time to finish two more classes. I did take a vacation, but not before I wrote a literature review, synthesizing 30 peer-reviewed research articles; planned my research project for the second year of the MA program; and wrote up the project’s organization–research on how well students perform non-fiction writing when reading science and social studies books, not the textbook.

California schools received the results of the summative tests taken last spring. Our school did well, though not the highest scoring school in the district. On the Academic Performance Index (API), the state’s scoreboard, the school has maintained its 900+. Any school in the state would be overjoyed with such a score.

I’ve been reading the newspapers and it’s a good thing our school is high-performing because school budgets in California are still wobbly. The 188 low-performing schools throughout the state will be earmarked to receive any state and federal monies left in the bucket.

Those schools would benefit from the waivers that the U.S. Department of Education is offering if California shows a plan that will demonstrate progress to reach benchmarks. Friends in my MA program at San Jose State University who teach in low-performing schools are hoping the state will adjust the benchmarks. Even our school won’t reach the No Child Left Behind law’s Annual Yearly Progress scores by 2014. Already our Hispanic and African-American students are falling behind.

The San Francisco school described in the San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2011, article “State schools closer to making the grade” will certainly benefit from a plan to celebrate gains students have made. Wouldn’t the wise move be to provide resources to continue improvement rather than punish the school for not making benchmarks that were unrealistic to begin with?

According to the article, the students at San Francisco’s John Muir Elementary are spending the year on strategies to become good readers. My students can read well; they need to improve their ability to write non-fiction compositions. Maybe one genre for my research project can be simple persuasive essays. My students can persuade Tom Torlakson, new California Superintendent of Public Instruction, to apply for a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education. Relieve the stress on students to reach unrealistic benchmarks. Every class has at least one student who would benefit from a compromise.

Same Test, Incomparable Results

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

The once-a-year test will appear on students’ desks any day now. The school day will turn topsy-turvy to accommodate testing schedules. The exam-specified amount of time to complete each section must be provided while supervising speedy high-achieving students who are bored out of their mind and waiting for more deliberate test-takers to finish.

Death Valley Academy High School

Death Valley Academy High School

In California, since the No Child Left Behind Act was legislated, the exam switched from a generic standardized type summative test (assess all that has been learned in the current year and recalled from the past).  Now, a criterion-referenced summative exam with questions that reflect the California curriculum standards taught at each grade level is the model. Note that analysis of results gives you a lot of numbers and percentages, but the school’s or student’s results tell you little more than high-performing or low-performing.

Why is that true?

Think about Death Valley Academy High School in the tiny town of Shoshone, Inyo County, California. Hot, dry climate and desert flora and fauna. Expect to see a roadrunner on occasion. Two community colleges and one all-male private college are located in the area.

Think of Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, north end of Santa Clara County, California’s Silicon Valley. Temperate weather, the remains of fruit orchards, and hills just right for cattle and mountain lions. Five universities and three community colleges are located nearby.

In 2010 on testing days, Death Valley Academy High School had a total of 35 students, grades 7-12. Seventeen students took the exam. The school wide proficiency for English/Language Arts (ELA) was 52.9%–9 students. The Math proficiency was 47.1%–8 students. Under statistical modifications for very small schools, DVHS met the federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets and received a California Academic Performance Index (API) scale score of 766. One hundred percent of the students graduate.

Look further. With 35 students and 7 staff members, all but one or two students should be proficient. Reviews tout the one-on-one assistance provided. DVHS receives school-wide federal Title I funds, based on the income levels of the families. However, some students must take a bus 60 miles to reach school. Less than half of the parents have any college education. English, math, history is provided, Driver’s Education, Spanish, PE, and Art. There is an athletic director and a girls’ volleyball coach. No tutoring or English language assistance was listed. There are so few Hispanic or Native American students, they are not even disaggregated in the AYP data, normally a huge factor in assigning scores to call a school high- or low-performing.

In 2010, Palo Alto High had 1850 students and over 100 teachers, grades 8-12. Four hundred seventy-two students were tested and received a California API score of 896. The AYP school-wide data showed 89.8% student ELA proficiency and 90% Math proficiency. With a high number of white and Asian students whose families are well-off technology company workers and Stanford University faculty, the graduation rate is 98%. Eighty-eight percent attend 2-4 year colleges and 79% go directly to 4 year colleges.

The school has 3 counselors, a librarian, psychologist, Speech/language therapist, and 5 Resource Specialists to address the needs of the socially diverse student demographics. The website shows several schedules, 20 AP classes, daily bulletins, myriad student activities, and an email tab for parents. No wonder the school does well, even with the strained budgets in the state’s distressed fiscal climate.

How are students in a tiny out-of-the-way school in Death Valley going to compete with high-achieving, well-supported students in Silicon Valley? API and AYP numbers do little but indicate the need for help.

Rather than bicker over small sums for vouchers or tenure for a quick fix, look at demographics and geography to determine solutions.

Prognosis: California Will Wrangle

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

Happy New Year!  Take Care Productions wishes it would be, but it won’t happen until the state has exhausted itself fighting over ’spending cuts’ and ‘increasing revenue’.

Writers in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times have scratched their heads over low-performing schools that are not improving test scores.  Whether it shows up in an effort to call out poor teachers by using the “value-added” formula or in the bleak results when analyzing low rates of student proficiency, no one is happy.

The California Teachers Association  strong-armed California’s passage of the Quality Education Invest Act (QEIA) which uses the Academic Performance Index (California’s API) as the indicator of scholastic improvement.  In six years (2004 - 2010) the 500 QEIA schools reached an average of 21.2% proficient students.  That’s good enough?  It means 68.8% still weren’t on track.

Why?  Is it the ‘test’ or is it teacher evaluation? The media has written article after article. Universities have spewed forth document after document to talk about low-performing schools and poor quality tests or low-performing schools and poor  teacher evaluation.

On the other hand, Mary M. Kennedy of Michigan State has reminded everyone of the attribution error, ignoring the working conditions of the teacher, preparation time, materials, work assignments, untreated student characteristics.  As if no matter the conditions, a good teacher can make the difference.  Maybe, but it takes time.  And the “value-added” attribute doesn’t make the grade when school boards as well as unions insist on old evaluation tools.

In British Columbia, Michael Shumatcher hits the button when he reminds the country of the demographic issue, urban or rural, and struggling populations who could use spending to promote the neededlearning tools instead of useless evaluation tools.

Or read Thomas Stephens, professor emeritus at the College of Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University, who says one can find many good evaluation tools.  His hit is that the multi-billion dollar test industry won’t be pleased.

Let’s move on to California’s Sue Miller from Santa Monica who is representing the teachers who do all the work and need praise, not vitriol.

Which brings us to the wrangling likely in California which is deeply in debt from state to local entities.  Although many groups have been studying the problem, it comes down to cuts and taxes.

There will be no change in the tax plan to 1978’s Proposition 13 which started California down a long, dark road.  With effort, there may be a revision to the system of taxation generated by the proposition.  If you have read the article in SF Chronicle’s January 2 edition “Prop 13 in urgent need of retrofit” by Michael Gervais and Dontae Rayford, defunding special districts and creating regional property tax boards are the options suggested.  Neither change addresses the money that corporations don’t pay in taxes.

Governor Brown has been sworn in this week for a third term and one can figure that the dysfunctional sections of the California State Department of Education will get cuts, along with all state entities.  Let’s see if the temporary taxes made to balance previous budgets will be maintained.

The National Education Association in the January/February 2011 NEA today issue includes “The Long and Winding Road” by Mary Ellen Flannery and Kevin Hart. The writers covered the entire country and found priority schools that teachers have had some say in transforming.

However, the deficit is so large in California that it is hard to see how the state test (CST) and the evaluation system are going to be top priorities.  It is possible like Mary M. Kennedy has said that turning around low-performing schools should be the top priority.

Will that transformation ever happen?

Educational Earthquakes

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Last week we had another all-state earthquake drill.  Even Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, was under the desk at a school in the East Bay.  California is not kidding.  No hurricanes, no tornadoes, but schools are prepared for the unknown earthquake.

My 4th graders weren’t even born when the last major quake hit the bay area, October 21, 1989, but I remember it well.  I was waiting on my bike at the corner of the major intersection, on my way home from math tutoring.  I put my feet on the ground as the road started rumbling.  The guy next to me got out of his car, saying ‘That was a big one’ as an old lady fell to the ground.  After all the shocks stopped I was riding down the hill street, and another girl helped me stomp out a small fire that was burning in the dry grass.

This year’s earthquakes don’t heave the ground; instead financial choices and school choices are thrown around.  Especially with the elections coming up, day after day I read about the latest reform plan for some school, dependent on fiscal policy in the state.

In Monday’s New York Times, the article was about the New Jersey governor doing all he can to dump the teachers union.  Free marketers hate the unions, and I’m not sure how long this discussion about free market competition improving the quality of schools will continue.  What will happen in the meantime to low-performing schools whose students can’t wait for free markets to come up with, revise, and implement reform to make a unique, perfect school?  Some say good competitive schools are already providing a choice, but how many are actually receiving API of 900 like my traditional public school?  Right now, the score is the guide.

I know our school does well because the majority of parents are involved in the classroom and raise funds.  That’s how all the teachers, in spite of a severe budget crisis in the school district, managed to be retained for this year.

In my master’s classes I’ve reviewed the best language practices to show results.  For example, students need the skills to decode new vocabulary, infer, ask questions to analyze characters, predict.

Have you heard of ’silly bands’– thin rubber bands made in different shapes like a rabbit, a genie, a high-heel?  I used them in my master’s class to show how one uses those skills to figure out anything, even the form of a silly band.  I’ll tell you, those silly bands are one of the earthquakes in our school.  Right now they are causing an uproar in the lower grades and in my class, if I see one out, it goes in my drawer.

Still, I have students that read so well that during the language arts bloc each student has chosen a book and conferences with me at which time I give a mini-lesson about a skill not yet mastered.  Very different from other teachers in my master’s class who use an all class model to teach language arts.

At staff development at our school yesterday afternoon, another earthquake shook our vision of  teaching math.  Students are being asked to look at word problems and decode new vocabulary, infer, ask questions to analyze the operation, predict.  See what I mean about skills that will help a student do anything?

As long as the students learn to read for meaning and like books, including math books.  That is the goal for life, correct?

How Many Americans Think Public Schools Are ‘In Crisis’?

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

We received our Academic Performance Index (API) results Monday, September 13, and pumped our fists since our school, middle-of-the-road as far as our district goes, reached a score of 908.

Almost any school reaching 800 or above is considered fine and dandy, but according to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks a couple of the schools in my district, though showing an API of 900 or higher, are considered ‘program improvement’ schools.  That’s right. A disaggregated group did not reach the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) state goal of 56.8% in English/Language arts, 58% in Math.

The glitches in federal guidelines and state benchmarks, long warned about, are beginning to show up.  Of course, the school district immediately began to examine scores of the students who stayed at ‘basic’ or below, i.e. not good enough, and as we already knew, it was the special services students who didn’t make the grade.  Those small number of students are spread through the grades and so there aren’t enough to label my school ‘program improvement,’ especially since the younger students managed to make a good enough score.

Loud wailing about the weaknesses of the NCLB inspired exams and benchmarks set in 2002 continue all over the country.

But 67% of Americans think the public schools are ‘in crisis’?  As usual, statistics and polls must be read with caution–including Time magazine who paid for the poll.  What does the question mean?  No one in my school district, parents or educators, would say we’re in crisis as far as learning success.  Budget yes, learning, no.

I read, however, in The San Francisco Chronicle an opinion article that STAR tests aren’t secure, that is, old test examples can be modeled and even correct answers handed out, though I don’t know what evidence indicates that illegal activity.  Not at my school.

In my Masters classes, however, we have discussed tests like California’s STAR testing which will have to change now that the legislature and state Department of Education have agreed to Common Core Standards.

About time!  Special services students as well as high-achieving students might do better if the way to account for successful learning changed.  Right now a multiple-choice exam once a year is the easiest to score, disaggregate, and analyze.  Perhaps the experts should look at some other ways to find out if students, from high-achievers, special service students and all the diverse groups in between, are learning to read and do math well enough to think through to the meaning.

In an article by Susan Engel, director of the teaching program at Williams College, I was reminded of using and analyzing reading samples which is the reason I want to get funds for iPod-Touch tools.  In fact, that type of reading sample has been used in many schools to analyze reading and English Language Development.

Ms. Engel also suggests that we don’t need to obsessively follow each and every student every year to see how a particular school is doing.  Using that instrument to punish teachers is not going to improve a school.  I know this blog has enumerated a number of models that would keep public schools strong without being dependent on tests only.

Right now, of course, I’m just happy that this year my students are willing to learn without having to coax them every step of the way.

*For more see Susan Engel, The New York Times “Scientifically Tested Tests” September 20, 2010.

*See Time Magazine’s print article abridgement of the poll done by ABT SRBI, August 17-19, 2010.