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November 13, 2006

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Add to that the statistical problems faced by schools with small populations of various special catagories and you've got some stupid things going on.

I have argued this same point about "standards-based" accountability for years. I have written and pushed legislation to cure the problem in each of the last two legislative sessions, and was opposed by the education lobby and the entire Democrat caucus.

The problem can be taken care of not by throwing out testing as an accountability tool, but by using a growth model or value added approach to accountability.

The ODE, after opposing my bills (which would have repealed CIM/CAM and established a growth model assessment system) have now announced the end of CIM/CAM and have attempted to become a national pilot for a growth model testing system.

Unfortunately, there is still apparently a huge competence deficiency at the ODE, as the feds have now twice rejected their application for the pilot program.

If you toss testing as an accountability tool, how do you propose we hold teachers and schools accountable?

You assume, Rob, that there was no accountability for schools or teachers before NCLB. That's a mistaken assumption. Parents have always been provided feedback on the academic progress of their students through report cards, tests scores, and parent-teacher conferences, to name just a few.

Under NCLB, standardized testing has become a punitive tool. NCLB also made the utterly stupid decision to equate student performance on standardized tests to school performance. Schools whose students fail to reach arbitrary test benchmarks are then threatened with sanctions. That's a sorry way to improve the quality of public education.

I agree, Rob, that measuring growth is a better use of test scores. But I fundamentally disagree that test scores in and of themselves are suitable instruments of accountability. My next post (hopefully up today) will address that issue (again).

You ask about alternatives to standardized testing. There are many, primarily the use of performance asessments --sometimes called authentic assessment-- wherein students are asked to demonstrate their ability to think, analyze, create, and solve real world problems. Ironically, the original CIM, which you disparage, called for just that sort of assessment, including, as I wrote recently, the demonstration of converstional proficiency in a foreign language.

Actually I think your gripe with CIM has to do with the legislatively watered-down version circa 1995 which replaced performance assessments with subject area standardized tests. It's too bad that Measure 5 and the legislature never gave the original CIM a chance to work.

"You assume, Rob, that there was no accountability for schools or teachers before NCLB. That's a mistaken assumption. Parents have always been provided feedback on the academic progress of their students through report cards, tests scores, and parent-teacher conferences, to name just a few."

What of the accountability to the federal government which provides around 10% of the PPS budget? Weren't students with disinterested parents and guardians often "Left Behind" in the accountability model suggested? What about accountability to the 80% of taxpayers who have no children in the public schools?

Can it be shown that there are more students being left behind in PPS or Oregon's public schools since NCLB has been in effect? The 40 year decline of the Jefferson cluster is one example of students being left behind prior to NCLB.

Federal Title I money has funded special ed programs in schools since the mid 1960's, but it wasn't until 2002 that the feds under NCLB demanded test score proof that all kids --not just Title I students-- were making adequate yearly progress.

There are two problems with that. The first is that test scores, and only test scores, become the measure of learning. The second is that AYP, as determined by test scores, pretty much decides what's important to teach in schools, again not just to Title I students, but to all students.

No Child Left Behind is political language, cribbed from the Children's Defense Fund, so when you ask how many kids have been left behind at Jefferson or other schools, you're getting into politics rather than pedagogy. But I would hazard that prior to school choice, many students were getting a fairly well-rounded education at Jeff. Now, with enrollment down to below 600, probably not as many.

"But I would hazard that prior to school choice, many students were getting a fairly well-rounded education at Jeff."

Terry: You appear to be acknowledging that "choice" in PPS started "leaving students behind" long before NCLB came on the scene.

According to Tony Hopson a number of decisions since 1969 (Adams HS built) negatively affected Jefferson HS and other schools in its cluster.

I've long acknowledged that Portland's school choice system predates NCLB. And that it does indeed leave some kids behind.

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