My analysis of School Performance scores posted last week (see the article below) points out that the majority of schools in Louisiana may soon be rated as “D” or “F” schools. Such schools that do not increase their SPS by the growth mandated by BESE will have a minus attached to their assigned grades. These ratings will surely demoralize teachers, students, and parents and stigmatize these schools as failures. But the failure is that of our government to provide real support for struggling schools rather than failure of the schools themselves. Both Federal and State policies today are harmful rather than helpful to public education.
U. S. Education Secretary Duncan stated recently that within the next two years as many as 80% of our schools nationwide may be classified as failures by the No Child Left Behind law. This is the result of the flawed assumption that our schools alone can overcome the effects of poverty. This just added: Click on this link to read an article in The Texas Tribune about new research on poverty and Charters in their public school system. (Thank you to one of my readers for finding this story) The mandate in Louisiana that each school must reach a School Performance Score of 120 by 2014 shows the ignorance rather than the wisdom of our policy makers. The setting of SPS growth goals are arbitrary and based more on wishful thinking than on tested and proven educational practice. Academic performance does not occur because of decrees from higher authorities. Yet many thousands of professional educators and their students are sure to be punished for failing to achieve the goals of these dubious decrees.
The data used to produce the analysis of poverty vs SPS shows that 282 schools in Louisiana have between 90 and 100% of their students classified as high poverty students. The Federal and State governments ten years ago decreed that such schools should produce the same student performance as schools with only 10 to 20% poverty. This would be like the government requiring that the Intensive Care ward of a hospital have the same rate of success as a section of the hospital that treats people with minor colds and sniffles. Any expert in tests and measurement could have told the government that this goal was completely irrational. Rather than consult experts who could have recommended more productive approaches, the government decided to double down on previous bad bets.
The next step was to allow new management to take over so called “failing” schools. Direct takeover of so called “failing schools” by charter schools has resulted in major declines in student performance in the Baton Rouge area and other parts of the state. (Click here to see our post of Feb. 19) The New Orleans system of takeover has resulted in higher scores for a very few select schools with overall sub par average performance in the New Orleans Recovery District. Legislation that provided vouchers to allow public school students in New Orleans to attend private/parochial schools has resulted in declines in student achievement. But the government was not yet tired of micro-management.
The new punitive grading scale to be implemented this fall is sure to make it even more difficult for schools to get the needed cooperation of parents who will be encouraged by this system to simply blame the principal and the teachers. This meddling with local schools by the state and federal governments is sure to drive the most competent and dedicated educators away from the schools most in need of their services.
The latest strategies of the public school haters are thinly disguised. Recently when parents were given the choice to transfer their students from so called “failing” schools to more successful public schools they have usually declined to do so. So recently Baton Rouge was visited by a group of pro-voucher advocates who are trying to drum up support among parents of high poverty students for additional vouchers for the Baton Rouge area. As schools are assigned “D-” and “F-” this fall, parents in high poverty communities are expected to demand vouchers to send their children to private/parochial schools. The governor who is now in the process of starving traditional public schools of state support has already announced that he will support additional vouchers. Even in a budget crisis there is apparently always new money for non-public schools.
The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is meeting this week to determine legislative priorities for the defense of our public school system. Please check with this web site and with the Face book page of the Coalition to get up-to-the-minute reports on scheduled actions at the legislature. If you believe in public education, please contact your legislators about these critical issues.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Analysis of School Performance Scores
As much as the authorities governing education would like to link school performance primarily to the effectiveness of educators, the statistics tell us otherwise. Just as educators have warned for years, the most important factor affecting school performance is poverty. Now you can see it in powerful numbers as calculated from Excel spreadsheets using data collected by the LA Dept. of Education. The data and accompanying chart includes data on every public school in the state that had an assigned SPS.
This analysis was created by using the student poverty data as measured by free and reduced lunches from each school compared to the school performance score of each school. A total of nine data points were created using the free and reduced lunch percentages for schools related to School Performance Scores. The average SPS using data for all schools with 10 to 19.9% students on free or reduced lunch was used to produce the first data point (There were no schools with less than 10% poverty students according to the data collected by the Dept. of Education).The next data point was produced using an average SPS for schools serving 20 to 29.9% poverty students and so on to 90 to 100% free or reduced lunch. The data below and the chart shows the relationship between poverty and average school performance score. The relationship is striking in its consistency. (Click on image to enlarge)
The state and federal governments have mandated that all schools in Louisiana regardless of poverty factors are expected to reach an SPS of 120 by 2014. With only 3 years left and an average growth of 1.2 SPS points per year that has occurred since the beginning of this mandate, high poverty schools are placed at an impossible disadvantage. Louisiana has a huge majority of high poverty schools, placing the whole state at an extreme disadvantage.
The other unfair disadvantage is the newly adopted school grading scale. This fall the public and parents will be told by newspapers and by letters to parents that certain schools are performing very poorly, when all that is being determined is the level of poverty of the students attending. A school serving high poverty students may have an SPS score of 89 at the end of this school year, and have shown significant growth over the previous year, but if the school did not achieve its state mandated growth target, that school will be assigned a D-minus grade even though it is outperforming 90% of the schools in its poverty level.
One of my readers from another state sent me an email stating that "Blaming schools for the academic failure of poor children makes no more sense than blaming hospitals for the lung diseases of people who smoke cigarettes."
Another major factor affecting SPS scores is student selection by certain schools such as magnet schools or alternative schools. A magnet school may have truly top notch teachers but the most important factor affecting the SPS is the admittance of only students that have high aptitude and motivation. It is not fair for the grading system to compare them with general admittance schools. The opposite situation exists for alternative schools that primarily take students with academic or discipline problems. These schools will always be graded unfairly compared to regular or magnet schools.
The above analysis shows that there are certain dominant factors that far outweigh the influence of effective teachers in determining a school's SPS. My question then is: Why are professional educators in Louisiana allowing their schools and their own performance to be improperly reported to the public as poor or failing by this unfair school grading system?
I don't know of any way this new letter grading systems for schools could be made fair, but Senate Bill 35 in the upcoming legislative session by Senator Yvonne Dorsey would delay implementation of the letter grading system and require BESE to review and possibly revise the program. The results of the BESE reconsideration would have to be reported to the Education Committees of the Legislature before final adoption. I hope all persons interested in improving rather than damaging our public education system will contact their legislators and ask them to support this bill. Get the email address of your State Representative by clicking on the highlighted link, and your Senator at this link.
This analysis was created by using the student poverty data as measured by free and reduced lunches from each school compared to the school performance score of each school. A total of nine data points were created using the free and reduced lunch percentages for schools related to School Performance Scores. The average SPS using data for all schools with 10 to 19.9% students on free or reduced lunch was used to produce the first data point (There were no schools with less than 10% poverty students according to the data collected by the Dept. of Education).The next data point was produced using an average SPS for schools serving 20 to 29.9% poverty students and so on to 90 to 100% free or reduced lunch. The data below and the chart shows the relationship between poverty and average school performance score. The relationship is striking in its consistency. (Click on image to enlarge)
In addition, an analysis of individual schools within each poverty group, shows very few schools have SPS scores that differ greatly from the average SPS for their poverty group. For example: In the lowest poverty group, 10-19.9% free/reduced lunch, all schools scored above 120 SPS. In the 20-29.9% poverty group, only 6% scored below 100 SPS. At the other extreme, (90- 99.9 % free/reduced lunch) only 8% of the schools scored a 90 or above SPS.
The state and federal governments have mandated that all schools in Louisiana regardless of poverty factors are expected to reach an SPS of 120 by 2014. With only 3 years left and an average growth of 1.2 SPS points per year that has occurred since the beginning of this mandate, high poverty schools are placed at an impossible disadvantage. Louisiana has a huge majority of high poverty schools, placing the whole state at an extreme disadvantage.
The other unfair disadvantage is the newly adopted school grading scale. This fall the public and parents will be told by newspapers and by letters to parents that certain schools are performing very poorly, when all that is being determined is the level of poverty of the students attending. A school serving high poverty students may have an SPS score of 89 at the end of this school year, and have shown significant growth over the previous year, but if the school did not achieve its state mandated growth target, that school will be assigned a D-minus grade even though it is outperforming 90% of the schools in its poverty level.
One of my readers from another state sent me an email stating that "Blaming schools for the academic failure of poor children makes no more sense than blaming hospitals for the lung diseases of people who smoke cigarettes."
Another major factor affecting SPS scores is student selection by certain schools such as magnet schools or alternative schools. A magnet school may have truly top notch teachers but the most important factor affecting the SPS is the admittance of only students that have high aptitude and motivation. It is not fair for the grading system to compare them with general admittance schools. The opposite situation exists for alternative schools that primarily take students with academic or discipline problems. These schools will always be graded unfairly compared to regular or magnet schools.
The above analysis shows that there are certain dominant factors that far outweigh the influence of effective teachers in determining a school's SPS. My question then is: Why are professional educators in Louisiana allowing their schools and their own performance to be improperly reported to the public as poor or failing by this unfair school grading system?
I don't know of any way this new letter grading systems for schools could be made fair, but Senate Bill 35 in the upcoming legislative session by Senator Yvonne Dorsey would delay implementation of the letter grading system and require BESE to review and possibly revise the program. The results of the BESE reconsideration would have to be reported to the Education Committees of the Legislature before final adoption. I hope all persons interested in improving rather than damaging our public education system will contact their legislators and ask them to support this bill. Get the email address of your State Representative by clicking on the highlighted link, and your Senator at this link.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Limiting Opportunities For Graduation
The governors and leaders in big business from the Achieve group have decided once again what is important for all students in our public schools to learn, and you the educator will soon receive your marching orders to implement it! According to a recent article by Peter Whoriskey in the Washington Post, the Achieve group, an influential education reform organization formed by business leaders and governors that focuses on high school graduation requirements is pushing for the requirement of Algebra II for high school graduation. According to the story, 20 states have already adopted this requirement.
Achieve is touting a study they commissioned that shows a strong correlation between Algebra II takers in high school and success in graduation from college. From this study they have concluded that if all high school students were required to take Algebra II they would have a much better chance of graduating from college and in getting a great jobs, and from that we can assume that our country would guarantee its position as the leader of the world in business and technology. Never mind what the teachers say about trying to force this medicine down the throats of every grumbling kid; the business leaders know best. These are the same business leaders by the way, who created sub-prime mortgages, mortgage backed securities, derivatives, credit default swaps etc. that ended in a meltdown of our financial system. Its ironic that the bankers and Wall Street firms were using the services of young math whizzes who were hired to create these complex scams for the enrichment of the few, who in turn were bailed out by the hard working people of this country who never use Algebra II in their daily lives!
If you read all of the Washington post article however, you find that the chief researcher, Anthony Carnevale, who produced this study for the Achieve group is highly skeptical that a causal relationship really exists between Algebra II and college success. He points out that it may simply be that smart, hard working students who are willing to tackle Algebra II are also smart and determined enough to succeed in college. . . . . Yet the so called business leaders who have never set foot in a classroom have decided that every student should be forced to take and pass this if they are to be granted a high school diploma. Soon I predict that Bill Gates and Arne Duncan then President Obama will insist that Algebra II be required in all states. You can be sure that our State Superintendent is already planning to add this requirement in Louisiana. Never mind that the graduates we are starting to produce have no clue how to build anything, how to hang a picture straight, how to use a square or a level, how to use power tools, or how to do basic math (because we are moving them on to Algebra) or how their bank plans to rip them off with excessive overdraft fees and traps in the credit card fine print.
These so called education reform leaders are still using the old discredited theory that requiring difficult subjects in school “trains the mind” to think better and solve many other problems in unrelated fields. It used to be that Latin and French was required of all educated people, but more recently it's difficult math courses that are never used again by the average person. Cognitive learning studies over the last 100 years have demonstrated that such “train the mind” theories are invalid. Training the mind to do Algebra II or Chess, or puzzles only trains the mind to do those very things. It does not transfer to other useful skills in life. That's why there are bums in Central Park in New York who are experts at Chess but who have never held a productive job. I have a grandson who is a genius at playing video games on the internet but who dropped out of LSU because college was too boring and stressful. He had made an “A” in Algebra II and a 32 on his ACT, but never learned to work.
Arkansas was one of the first states to adopt the Algebra II “for all” requirement. Recently their students were tested after taking the Algebra II course and it was found that only 13 percent of the students had achieved any sort of proficiency in the subject. But instead of reassessing the wisdom of forcing all students to take this course, the state education officials said the teachers are just going to have to work harder to make the course work. What do the teachers think? According to the Washington Post article, some of them are worried about students dropping out without a high school diploma because of this requirement.
The personnel director at Northrup Grummond shipbuilding in New Orleans complained to the High School Redesign Commission that local kids were not prepared in high school to go to work at his facility because they did not know enough math. Yet when you check Northrup Grummond's employment of entry level workers, you would find that the company has a preference for hiring Hispanic/Mexican origin workers with no high school education at all and limited English skills. Why the discrepancy in their talk and their hiring practices? It turns out that Mexican origin workers have a habit of showing up for work on time every day and are willing to learn and do anything the foreman requires while many of the of the local origin kids are just plain unreliable no matter what their education. Its a sad fact that our young people failed on work ethics more than on math background. Do you think this could be fixed by requiring Algebra II?
Look, I was a Physics and Chemistry teacher. I love math and science. But I also know that every kid is different in his/her aptitudes and interests. Our country needs good plumbers, electricians, medical technicians, truck drivers, office workers, musicians and teachers just as much as it needs mathematicians. (Do you think our Superintendent or BESE members would pass an Algebra II test?) If we followed the example of Finland and tried to identify a student's aptitudes and interests and focused on developing the skills related to those interests instead of demanding the same of every student, our educational system may be more successful. It would also help if we did more to connect what we do in school to potential careers in many varied fields. Will it help our students and our state instead to flunk kids out of high school just because they have trouble with logarithms and quadratic equations?
Achieve is touting a study they commissioned that shows a strong correlation between Algebra II takers in high school and success in graduation from college. From this study they have concluded that if all high school students were required to take Algebra II they would have a much better chance of graduating from college and in getting a great jobs, and from that we can assume that our country would guarantee its position as the leader of the world in business and technology. Never mind what the teachers say about trying to force this medicine down the throats of every grumbling kid; the business leaders know best. These are the same business leaders by the way, who created sub-prime mortgages, mortgage backed securities, derivatives, credit default swaps etc. that ended in a meltdown of our financial system. Its ironic that the bankers and Wall Street firms were using the services of young math whizzes who were hired to create these complex scams for the enrichment of the few, who in turn were bailed out by the hard working people of this country who never use Algebra II in their daily lives!
If you read all of the Washington post article however, you find that the chief researcher, Anthony Carnevale, who produced this study for the Achieve group is highly skeptical that a causal relationship really exists between Algebra II and college success. He points out that it may simply be that smart, hard working students who are willing to tackle Algebra II are also smart and determined enough to succeed in college. . . . . Yet the so called business leaders who have never set foot in a classroom have decided that every student should be forced to take and pass this if they are to be granted a high school diploma. Soon I predict that Bill Gates and Arne Duncan then President Obama will insist that Algebra II be required in all states. You can be sure that our State Superintendent is already planning to add this requirement in Louisiana. Never mind that the graduates we are starting to produce have no clue how to build anything, how to hang a picture straight, how to use a square or a level, how to use power tools, or how to do basic math (because we are moving them on to Algebra) or how their bank plans to rip them off with excessive overdraft fees and traps in the credit card fine print.
These so called education reform leaders are still using the old discredited theory that requiring difficult subjects in school “trains the mind” to think better and solve many other problems in unrelated fields. It used to be that Latin and French was required of all educated people, but more recently it's difficult math courses that are never used again by the average person. Cognitive learning studies over the last 100 years have demonstrated that such “train the mind” theories are invalid. Training the mind to do Algebra II or Chess, or puzzles only trains the mind to do those very things. It does not transfer to other useful skills in life. That's why there are bums in Central Park in New York who are experts at Chess but who have never held a productive job. I have a grandson who is a genius at playing video games on the internet but who dropped out of LSU because college was too boring and stressful. He had made an “A” in Algebra II and a 32 on his ACT, but never learned to work.
Arkansas was one of the first states to adopt the Algebra II “for all” requirement. Recently their students were tested after taking the Algebra II course and it was found that only 13 percent of the students had achieved any sort of proficiency in the subject. But instead of reassessing the wisdom of forcing all students to take this course, the state education officials said the teachers are just going to have to work harder to make the course work. What do the teachers think? According to the Washington Post article, some of them are worried about students dropping out without a high school diploma because of this requirement.
The personnel director at Northrup Grummond shipbuilding in New Orleans complained to the High School Redesign Commission that local kids were not prepared in high school to go to work at his facility because they did not know enough math. Yet when you check Northrup Grummond's employment of entry level workers, you would find that the company has a preference for hiring Hispanic/Mexican origin workers with no high school education at all and limited English skills. Why the discrepancy in their talk and their hiring practices? It turns out that Mexican origin workers have a habit of showing up for work on time every day and are willing to learn and do anything the foreman requires while many of the of the local origin kids are just plain unreliable no matter what their education. Its a sad fact that our young people failed on work ethics more than on math background. Do you think this could be fixed by requiring Algebra II?
Look, I was a Physics and Chemistry teacher. I love math and science. But I also know that every kid is different in his/her aptitudes and interests. Our country needs good plumbers, electricians, medical technicians, truck drivers, office workers, musicians and teachers just as much as it needs mathematicians. (Do you think our Superintendent or BESE members would pass an Algebra II test?) If we followed the example of Finland and tried to identify a student's aptitudes and interests and focused on developing the skills related to those interests instead of demanding the same of every student, our educational system may be more successful. It would also help if we did more to connect what we do in school to potential careers in many varied fields. Will it help our students and our state instead to flunk kids out of high school just because they have trouble with logarithms and quadratic equations?
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