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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - brewster and shadrack
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Re LCCS - yes, parents who have the initiative to visit the school, apply, etc. are parents who MAY be more education-oriented. BUT LCCS is only one of several charter schools in Jersey City. Motivated parents are one piece of the puzzle -- but just one piece. If I had the answers, I'd be publishing them for big bucks.

Re McNair Academic -- let's not forget the fact that McNair accepts only the top kids in the city. Excellent grades and PSATs scores ensure that McNair student body is starting the race way ahead of all other schools.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 20:08
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It\'s AWFUL
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New Jersey's experience with NCLB is not unlike other states, many even more dire based on NCLB test results. This is no surprise as NCLB requirements without adequate funding to support them has been a complete failure. The federal government has never properly funded the program and as a result what could've been a very helpful tool to assess achievement is now a set of tests that are largely marginalized. At this point, most states probably only administer to tests because they cannot afford to lose funding.

Generally speaking, kids from educated households do better because learning continues after the child leaves school. Sadly in our society there is strong link between education level and socio-economic status. JC's population has historically been working class and poor. Considering all the challenges that come along with that in this society, it should be no surprise that kids (especially kids that are true products of the JC school system) struggle. Not talking about every single kid, but generally speaking educators know that a huge predictor of student success is parent educational level, socio-economic status and also, as someone else mentioned, whether the student belongs to a culture (family, neighborhood, or broader) which values education.

Sad commentary: As more educated people move into JC, have children and decide to send them to public schools here, things will improve because they will refuse to accept the mediocrity that the district has become accustomed to dishing out. Educated parents will simply DEMAND better by being all over the administration and teachers. Generally speaking, evidence of this will be the divide that will exist between test scores from students who live downtown and students who live in areas outside of downtown in the coming years.

In this country education and economics are joined at the hip. The poor generally get a poor educational experience while the affluent get a well rounded rich educational experience. A poor educational experience makes it more difficult to overcome poverty and all its trappings which is often likely to produce another generation of poor and poorly educated adults who are likely to continue the cycle when/if they have children.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 19:23
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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The interesting thing about LCCS, not that the teachers aren't excellent, is how much even as simple a filter as applying to the school and being willing to get your kid there will produce a high performing cadre. It doesn't filter the kid for ability, it filters the parents, for families caring about education.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 17:47
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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jerseymom wrote:

Quote:
Why can one school like Learning Center Charter have decent scores and a sought-after reputation? Why can't their success be replicated throughout the district?


I am not a teacher, but did research for several districts and a think tank over the years. Small class sizes and highly trained teachers equate success in the classroom. It is one of the reasons why Academic/McNair is successful. Replication on some level is tough with no funding, rotten legislation, and some teachers that need to retire.

Likewise, school boards should have more educational professionals in their ranks and not the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. In Jersey City, that won't happen.

Finally, there is a cycle that needs to be broken. Parents with little or a failed education base don't necessarily instill the same learning ethic that educated parents do. The money per student ratio argument does not take into account this very important factor.

Nothing is impossible, but the solutions and methods to remedy Jersey City's problems take funds and some innovative ideas that lack support. Unfortunately, when Jersey City has some money, it is spent badly.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 17:17
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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I guess the thing that befuddles me the most as a mom of school-age children is the "answer" to fixing the JC public school system.

Scores and numbers don't lie - and across the board, regardless of the type of test, our kids are not doing all that well. Why?

Why can one school like Learning Center Charter have decent scores and a sought-after reputation? Why can't their success be replicated throughout the district?

When I'm seeing schools with 30% and 40% literacy/math comprehension scores in the early years of learning, what chances do these children have in their later years to catch up and thrive?

It cannot be a money-per-student issue - our rates are on par with better performing districts. Linky sounds like a teacher we need here in Jersey City - but is her type of approach not acceptable in our district?

I'd be interested in hearing from teachers in Jersey City.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 16:00
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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Quote:

linky wrote:
Quote:

greenville wrote:
Education starts at home, if your not educated by your parents you'll have trouble trying to learn from a stranger. Too many parents in this city have bad luck, didn't try hard enough to get a good job that would let them have more time, are too stupid, are criminals, or/and have made too many mistakes in their lives including having kids to care about their kids education.


Pretty rough...................but I taught Elementary School Basic Skills Math and Reading, and I have to admit that it's true.

I'll have to add to it and say that to truly value education one must come from a family and community which values education.


Right on with what yr stating along with Greenville.
The stats and numbers don't lie, Some people love to place their spin on it, but fact remains, most parents and I say that lightly don't stay behind their kids or get involved in their education becuase putting it frankly, they don't care, They feel that the teachers should be the surragate parent and thats out right WRONG!

Posted on: 2008/12/22 15:37
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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Quote:

linky wrote:
Quote:

greenville wrote:
Education starts at home, if your not educated by your parents you'll have trouble trying to learn from a stranger. Too many parents in this city have bad luck, didn't try hard enough to get a good job that would let them have more time, are too stupid, are criminals, or/and have made too many mistakes in their lives including having kids to care about their kids education.


Pretty rough...................but I taught Elementary School Basic Skills Math and Reading, and I have to admit that it's true.

I'll have to add to it and say that to truly value education one must come from a family and community which values education.


No way! Have you thought about first blaming everyone/everything besides yourself? Afterall, we all know nobody is accountable for thier own actions/outcomes.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 15:26
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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K-Lo wrote:
I was not dismissing standardized testing, merely the conclusions that are required to be drawn by NCLB. According to some NJ educators, the NJASK tests themselves are well structured and well thought out. They test actual knowledge and reasoning, rather than the ability to pscych out the test. Comparing annual scores on these tests is effective.

I don't know how many schools in Jersey City are small ones (though my children do attend smaller schools). The point of the article I posted above is that smaller schools, something that all educators agree are generally better for children, suffer under the way the scores are used. There really isn't any controversy that smaller schools and smaller class sizes improve education. Yet the method of federal reporting on standardized tests penalizes the very structure that is best. The federal goverment has set up a conflict in what is best for children and what schools must to do beat the system.



As I wrote in a previious post, I taught Basic Skills Math and Reading for fifteen years. During my last 6 years of teaching I taught in a middle school in Bergen County where a big part of my job was to help my students passs the GEPA ( Great Eight Proficiency Exam).

First, I have to agree that the exam is much better than the standardized tests most of us had to take in grade school. Better because it is a better indicator of how well a student can read, write, solve math computation problems as well as word problems. Kids have to write a persuasive essay, analyze poems, and analyze written works.

In math, they have to do a lot of problem solving and explain ,in words, how they came to their conclusion.

So the test is not a problem. In my opinion the problem lies with the political pressure that is put on schools to do well on the tests, and, more importantly, the inability of a lot of schools, and teachers to find a way to best teach their students so that they can succeed, both in school and on the tests.

When I was teaching, I saw it very clearly. If a kid can write an essay, understand a poem, comprehend what he reads then he will have no problem on the GEPA. So, I taught my kids to do what they needed to do for the test and for their education. My supervisor used to try and force me to use test prep workbooks in my classes. Thank God I was a tenured teacher with a good principle in a small district. I could refuse the textbooks and use a large budget to pick out the materials I wanted. I chose books which had collections of great literature. My reluctant readers read Poe, Shirley Jackson, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, etc.

They watched quality films such as Quiz Show and Ordinary People and analyzed them for themes, character studies, irony, etc.

I bought an overhead projector at staples and did a math word problem of the day twice a week. They did a problem and explained their methods on a piece of acetate and then we put each one up on the overhead for the group to critique and compare.

Guess what? Not only did my kids do well on the GEPA, but, most importantly, they learned.

Sorry for this big long explanation, but this is something that is rarely brought up in the discussion about standardized testing.

If we had good teachers who were allowed to have some autonomy and creativity, we would not have to choose between using valuable time for the standardized test and teaching the curriculum. Again, if you were familiar with tests such as the GEPA you would see that.

And one more thing. I think publishing companies are parly to blame. They make a lot of money by selling their crap workbooks to districts that are scared to death of these tests.

Just my two cents on a subject that can be upsetting to me.

Posted on: 2008/12/22 15:22
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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I was not dismissing standardized testing, merely the conclusions that are required to be drawn by NCLB. According to some NJ educators, the NJASK tests themselves are well structured and well thought out. They test actual knowledge and reasoning, rather than the ability to pscych out the test. Comparing annual scores on these tests is effective.

I don't know how many schools in Jersey City are small ones (though my children do attend smaller schools). The point of the article I posted above is that smaller schools, something that all educators agree are generally better for children, suffer under the way the scores are used. There really isn't any controversy that smaller schools and smaller class sizes improve education. Yet the method of federal reporting on standardized tests penalizes the very structure that is best. The federal goverment has set up a conflict in what is best for children and what schools must to do beat the system.

Posted on: 2008/12/21 19:34
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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I agree that the testing requirements of NCLB are problematic.

I also agree that mean scores in smaller schools will fluctuate more than in larger schools.

But how many Jersey City schools are "small"?



What is the best way to measure the quality and subsequent growth or decline in quality of our schools? People are quick to dismiss standardized testing, but realistically, what is the alternative? Not trying to defend standardized testing here....I am really interested in understanding the alternatives.

Posted on: 2008/12/21 18:42
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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Quote:

greenville wrote:
Education starts at home, if your not educated by your parents you'll have trouble trying to learn from a stranger. Too many parents in this city have bad luck, didn't try hard enough to get a good job that would let them have more time, are too stupid, are criminals, or/and have made too many mistakes in their lives including having kids to care about their kids education.


Pretty rough...................but I taught Elementary School Basic Skills Math and Reading, and I have to admit that it's true.

I'll have to add to it and say that to truly value education one must come from a family and community which values education.

Posted on: 2008/12/20 19:21
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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K-Lo wrote:
The principal at Learning Community Charter School explained it to me -- but I am not an educator or statistician. This excerpt from "Small is Volatile" by Wayne Au does a good job of it.

* * * * *

Big Trouble for Little Schools

"High-stakes standardized tests like the ones Bush is proposing can only mean big trouble for small schools. All other arguments about testing aside, small schools are extremely "volatile" when it comes to measuring their progress statistically through standardized test scores. To be volatile in a statistical sense means that you may be subject to wild swings in test scores from year-to-year, grade-to-grade, and school-to-school.

In their oft-cited article "Volatility in School Test Scores: Implications for Test-Based Accountability Systems," education researchers Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger found that in North Carolina, the smallest schools had 50 percent more variability in test scores than the largest schools. In layperson's terms, this means small schools had swings in their scores that were 50 percent "wider" than large schools.

If you take a moment to think about it, the logic of this test score volatility makes absolute sense. Say you have a small high school or school-within-a-school of 200 students (50 per grade). In one year, you may have recruited 20 students who achieve higher test scores relative to the rest of their grade. Because your high school is small, and these 20 students (fully 10 percent of your total small school population) did well on a test, your school will show strong gains in test scores and AYP. Kudos for you and your school.

But say that in your next year, you recruited 20 more students who perform poorly on standardized tests. Suddenly, this new group of students' test scores, because they represent 10 percent of your student population, will have a drastically negative impact on your school's overall test scores. Whoops! You've shown a drop in scores, didn't meet your AYP, and are now placed on the NCLB school watch list where, if you don't improve in three years, you could be privatized or reconstituted.

Perhaps one of the twisted implications of small school volatility has to do with its impact on diversity. From the angle of high-stakes tests scores, small schools are better off having homogenous populations. If a small group of either high-scoring or low-scoring students can have such a drastic impact on your school's high-stakes test scores, and the future of your small school depends on the standards set by AYP, then it serves a small school's interest to keep low-scoring students out. Because we know that statistically black, Latino, and low-income students perform poorly on the high-stakes tests relative to white and middle-class populations, there is an incentive for small schools to keep poor students of color out of their schools for fear of having scores that don't meet AYP.

A similar logic extends to other, non-racial, subgroups that are counted for AYP. If, for instance, you have a significant number of bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) students, then you have to show AYP on test scores for that subgroup. If you don't have any bilingual or ESL students, then you have no reason to show improvement in that category because the subgroup simply does not exist for you. The more subgroups you have, the more ways there are for you to fail to meet AYP. In an article in Education Week, "Subgroup Reporting and School Segregation," authors Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel, and Colin Chellman note, "Ironically, be-cause of the way the law is written, the schools and districts that could end up being most heavily penalized are those that are the most heavily integrated." Looking at it from the other direction, homogeneously tracked or privileged small schools can insulate themselves from NCLB's "close the gap" mandate by avoiding student populations with test-score gaps in the first place.

Small schools may be able to sneak under the subgroup reporting radar, however. If you are a small school and you have just enough diversity, but not enough to be required to report subgroups under NCLB, then it is possible that you might avoid having to report test-score data for any group at all. Many states have set their magic number at around 30 to 40 students in any one subgroup to be counted for AYP, but predominately rural states like South Dakota cannot work with subgroup reporting numbers that high, since many of their schools are so small that they have no "official" test scores to report for AYP.

High-Stakes Battle

Many of us who have taken up small schools reform have done so for the best of reasons. I know that I loved working in a small school. I knew my students' home and life situations, I knew their academic histories, and best of all, I knew them personally. Small schools hold the promise of building community and allowing us to create institutions of learning that are not as alienating and inhumane as the large factory-school prototype.

But NCLB and its focus on high-stakes testing and AYP puts a stranglehold on small schools' abilities to work effectively with kids, especially if we build our small schools around diverse student populations. Issues like social justice, equity, and opportunities to learn don't count for much on the tests. Thus we are faced with having to wedge our schools into a behemoth assessment and "accountability" system that is structured for standardization, not creativity and social justice.

Many people have already been resisting high-stakes testing in high schools. A coalition of more than 45 education, civil rights, child advocacy, disability, and religious organizations including the NAACP, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Education Association, and the National Alliance of Black School Educators recently sent a letter to Congress protesting Bush's new plan to increase high school testing. This same group of organizations released a "Joint Organizational State-ment" in October 2004 calling for substantial changes to NCLB. Addition-ally, small schools in New York waged a fierce battle against the Regents tests, touting a portfolio assessment system that was far more rigorous than the tests [See "Standardizing Small," page 15.] Even though policy-makers ignored the power of portfolios, this spirited and organized resistance shows that communities are standing up to the tests.

To add fuel to our fires, and maybe to "empirically" prove what many of us already knew, a recent study by the Northwest Evaluation Association found that the high-stakes tests weren't really working anyway. This study, which used data from more than 320,000 students in 23 states, found that test-score gains have slowed greatly, and improvements may be attributed to students getting used to taking tests as they grow up in an educational era dominated by NCLB. Additionally, this study found that test-score gaps between students of color and white students were still widening, instead of closing. "

It's not that all standardized tests are bad - not at all - but the way these tests are used, and the conclusions that are required to be drawn from NCLB laws are the problem.


This article sums it up well. We all know that standardized testing is not going to vanish because schools need to be held accountable, but there needs to be reform. NCLB did not work, lets move on.
Those tests are hard. Think about when you had to take them in high school, then put yourself into the shoes of a student living in poverty, with no stablility at home. Not only do these students have to think about these tests, but they have their survival to worry about.
Also. testing in Kindergarten...really?

Posted on: 2008/12/20 3:20
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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Education starts at home, if your not educated by your parents you'll have trouble trying to learn from a stranger. Too many parents in this city have bad luck, didn't try hard enough to get a good job that would let them have more time, are too stupid, are criminals, or/and have made too many mistakes in their lives including having kids to care about their kids education.

Posted on: 2008/12/20 2:33
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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fat-ass-bike wrote:
I'm sure McCann will sort it all out !

Gerry, or Jerry, it's still Jersey City to me.

Posted on: 2008/12/20 2:19
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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I'm sure McCann will sort it all out !

Posted on: 2008/12/20 2:17
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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The principal at Learning Community Charter School explained it to me -- but I am not an educator or statistician. This excerpt from "Small is Volatile" by Wayne Au does a good job of it.

* * * * *

Big Trouble for Little Schools

"High-stakes standardized tests like the ones Bush is proposing can only mean big trouble for small schools. All other arguments about testing aside, small schools are extremely "volatile" when it comes to measuring their progress statistically through standardized test scores. To be volatile in a statistical sense means that you may be subject to wild swings in test scores from year-to-year, grade-to-grade, and school-to-school.

In their oft-cited article "Volatility in School Test Scores: Implications for Test-Based Accountability Systems," education researchers Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger found that in North Carolina, the smallest schools had 50 percent more variability in test scores than the largest schools. In layperson's terms, this means small schools had swings in their scores that were 50 percent "wider" than large schools.

If you take a moment to think about it, the logic of this test score volatility makes absolute sense. Say you have a small high school or school-within-a-school of 200 students (50 per grade). In one year, you may have recruited 20 students who achieve higher test scores relative to the rest of their grade. Because your high school is small, and these 20 students (fully 10 percent of your total small school population) did well on a test, your school will show strong gains in test scores and AYP. Kudos for you and your school.

But say that in your next year, you recruited 20 more students who perform poorly on standardized tests. Suddenly, this new group of students' test scores, because they represent 10 percent of your student population, will have a drastically negative impact on your school's overall test scores. Whoops! You've shown a drop in scores, didn't meet your AYP, and are now placed on the NCLB school watch list where, if you don't improve in three years, you could be privatized or reconstituted.

Perhaps one of the twisted implications of small school volatility has to do with its impact on diversity. From the angle of high-stakes tests scores, small schools are better off having homogenous populations. If a small group of either high-scoring or low-scoring students can have such a drastic impact on your school's high-stakes test scores, and the future of your small school depends on the standards set by AYP, then it serves a small school's interest to keep low-scoring students out. Because we know that statistically black, Latino, and low-income students perform poorly on the high-stakes tests relative to white and middle-class populations, there is an incentive for small schools to keep poor students of color out of their schools for fear of having scores that don't meet AYP.

A similar logic extends to other, non-racial, subgroups that are counted for AYP. If, for instance, you have a significant number of bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) students, then you have to show AYP on test scores for that subgroup. If you don't have any bilingual or ESL students, then you have no reason to show improvement in that category because the subgroup simply does not exist for you. The more subgroups you have, the more ways there are for you to fail to meet AYP. In an article in Education Week, "Subgroup Reporting and School Segregation," authors Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel, and Colin Chellman note, "Ironically, be-cause of the way the law is written, the schools and districts that could end up being most heavily penalized are those that are the most heavily integrated." Looking at it from the other direction, homogeneously tracked or privileged small schools can insulate themselves from NCLB's "close the gap" mandate by avoiding student populations with test-score gaps in the first place.

Small schools may be able to sneak under the subgroup reporting radar, however. If you are a small school and you have just enough diversity, but not enough to be required to report subgroups under NCLB, then it is possible that you might avoid having to report test-score data for any group at all. Many states have set their magic number at around 30 to 40 students in any one subgroup to be counted for AYP, but predominately rural states like South Dakota cannot work with subgroup reporting numbers that high, since many of their schools are so small that they have no "official" test scores to report for AYP.

High-Stakes Battle

Many of us who have taken up small schools reform have done so for the best of reasons. I know that I loved working in a small school. I knew my students' home and life situations, I knew their academic histories, and best of all, I knew them personally. Small schools hold the promise of building community and allowing us to create institutions of learning that are not as alienating and inhumane as the large factory-school prototype.

But NCLB and its focus on high-stakes testing and AYP puts a stranglehold on small schools' abilities to work effectively with kids, especially if we build our small schools around diverse student populations. Issues like social justice, equity, and opportunities to learn don't count for much on the tests. Thus we are faced with having to wedge our schools into a behemoth assessment and "accountability" system that is structured for standardization, not creativity and social justice.

Many people have already been resisting high-stakes testing in high schools. A coalition of more than 45 education, civil rights, child advocacy, disability, and religious organizations including the NAACP, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Education Association, and the National Alliance of Black School Educators recently sent a letter to Congress protesting Bush's new plan to increase high school testing. This same group of organizations released a "Joint Organizational State-ment" in October 2004 calling for substantial changes to NCLB. Addition-ally, small schools in New York waged a fierce battle against the Regents tests, touting a portfolio assessment system that was far more rigorous than the tests [See "Standardizing Small," page 15.] Even though policy-makers ignored the power of portfolios, this spirited and organized resistance shows that communities are standing up to the tests.

To add fuel to our fires, and maybe to "empirically" prove what many of us already knew, a recent study by the Northwest Evaluation Association found that the high-stakes tests weren't really working anyway. This study, which used data from more than 320,000 students in 23 states, found that test-score gains have slowed greatly, and improvements may be attributed to students getting used to taking tests as they grow up in an educational era dominated by NCLB. Additionally, this study found that test-score gaps between students of color and white students were still widening, instead of closing. "

It's not that all standardized tests are bad - not at all - but the way these tests are used, and the conclusions that are required to be drawn from NCLB laws are the problem.

Posted on: 2008/12/20 1:23
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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but if you know what these numbers actually mean, you'll toss those stats in the trash.


Please, enlighten us, what do these numbers actually mean?

Posted on: 2008/12/20 0:22
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Re: JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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They certainly deserve a whole lot better than this bogus federal testing program, that's for sure. While I have no doubt that some schools are failing, the NCLB numbers are meaningless. I'm very happy that both of my children attend excellent public schools in Jersey City that consistently meet the NCLB targets, but if you know what these numbers actually mean, you'll toss those stats in the trash.

Posted on: 2008/12/19 23:56
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JC Schools Report Card - Of Sorts - And It's AWFUL
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From today's Jersey Journal:

Almost 30 percent of New Jersey public schools failed to meet student achievement requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind act, a slightly weaker performance compared with last year and again hitting hardest in urban and low-income districts.

The state today released the school-by-school results for every district, detailing how and where each school fared with each standard under the federal law.

......................................................

I quickly reviewed the stats and if I read this correctly, it appears that only 15 public schools in JC made their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) standards. A whopping 23 did not and 7 are in the "early warning" column.

Our children deserve better.

STATE RESULTS FOR NJ DISTRICTS

Posted on: 2008/12/19 23:07
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