question about schools not up to snuff for No Child Left Behind

[bigJOE]

i'll admit......i'm don't keep up with politics as much as i should. i've heard of the No Child Left Behind Act, never really read much on it.

so we registered my son for kindergarten, and after my wife signs him up, they hand her this letter saying that the school has been deemed below standards for the NCLB act, and offer the chance to transfer him to one of the other schools in the district.

is this really THAT big a deal if the school is not up to standards? my wife and i are thinking about transferring him.....are we overreacting? i'll hang up and listen

[MsFunkay]

it depends on why they're on that list, sometimes its not that major, but other times it could be

[Zythrst]

I would just go by what your think of the teacher, besides standardized testing as a measure is stupid to begin with especially for kids that young. For older I can see it, but not the kind of test we do now, more comprehensive exams including oral and practical portions imo. On the other hand it seems like it could be a sort of catch 22. A self fufilling prophesy where parents are handed this letter and the good commited ones are driven away, weakening the school considerably.

[blues22]

Yeah - here's the other thing about that's stupid about using the standardized tests. If the kids decide to just fill in random bubbles on MAP, it doesn't hurt them - it only hurts the school. I guess MO doesn't have the money to force all the kids who fail MAP to go to summer school.

When I was growing up in Indiana, you DID have to go to summer school if you failed, so the ISTEP seemed to be a tad more important.

[sportschick]

i'll admit......i'm don't keep up with politics as much as i should. i've heard of the No Child Left Behind Act, never really read much on it.

so we registered my son for kindergarten, and after my wife signs him up, they hand her this letter saying that the school has been deemed below standards for the NCLB act, and offer the chance to transfer him to one of the other schools in the district.

is this really THAT big a deal if the school is not up to standards? my wife and i are thinking about transferring him.....are we overreacting? i'll hang up and listen

Here's the deal, as much as I can tell...
Since it's just that school and not the whole district, I'd say that they mean that your son's particular school did not make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)...What AYP means is this...When NCLB was started, it was to make sure that all, and I mean all (every last kid, no matter age, race, econmic level, or disability/handicap) was reading on grade level by 2014. In order to make that happen, the government set benchmarks, if you will, for every year between NCLB start and the 2014 "end date" to show the schools' progress toward having every kid read on grade level. So, anyway...Schools test every kid every year (usually MAP) and the state takes the scores. The state breaks down the scores by every demographic imaginable (again, age/grade, race, free/reduced lunch kids, kids with handicaps/disabilities, kids for whom English is not their native language, etc) and make sure that not only is the school in general hitting those benchmarks, but also each of those demographic groups...Even if only 1 of those sub-groups does not make the benchmark, the whole school is deemd to not make AYP and thus, the letter you received.

Sorry this was long, but what do you expect when explaining a goofy-assed government policy that really is not realistic, and was set by government pencil pushers and not actual educators...

[sportschick]

Oh. Now on to you and your situation...As someone else said, go meet the teachers. Talk to the principal. Talk to other parents. Get their views on the school. Are they satisfied with their kids' education. What are the concerns of the parents.
Also, I think DESE's web site lists all the school's AYP so you can see where your son's school "fell down". If you have trouble finding it, straight ask the principal, he/she has it. He/she may not want to show you, but keep at it. As crass as it may sound, if it were my child, as long as my child's demographic was making AYP, I wouldn't worry about it.

[kjoe]

wikipedia has a very thorough article about nclb. They have a lot of positive, and a lot of negative stuff about it. You probably already know that democrats are required to oppose it and belittle it if they are to be taken seriously. Republicans, too, but not nearly so much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind

this kind of jumped out at me:

[edit] 'Gaming' the system

The system of incentives and penalties sets up a strong motivation for schools, districts, and states to manipulate test results. For example, schools have been shown to employ creative reclassification of drop-outs (to reduce unfavorable statistics).^[16]
Critics argue that these and other strategies create an inflated perception of NCLB's successes, particularly in states with high minority populations.^[17]
The incentives for an improvement also may cause states to lower their official standards. Missouri, for example, improved testing scores but openly admitted that they lowered the standards

[#1 Jimmy fan]

I personally would switch to one of the other schools. Thats just me tho. I also wouldn't send any of my future kids to public school.

I was tempted to yank mine out of public school in 10th grade (this year) but I don't want to hear, "you took me away from all my friends when I was 16" for the rest of my life.

[Bleacher Creature]

My sister-in-law (wife's sister) took hers out of school back in the early 90's in order to homeschool them. The oldest kid graduated last spring with a degree in Engineering from Ga. Tech. He's recently taken a job at one of the companies in San Jose. The second kid is going through culinary school in Dallas. The next girl wants to teach. The fouth and fifth kids are doing very well. All are also very great socially.

I've done a 180 on home schooling over this persiod. the more I meet, the more I realize that's a damn good idea.

[sportschick]

I personally would switch to one of the other schools. Thats just me tho. I also wouldn't send any of my future kids to public school.

I was tempted to yank mine out of public school in 10th grade (this year) but I don't want to hear, "you took me away from all my friends when I was 16" for the rest of my life.

Honestly, if I had a kiddo, I'd more than likely send him/her to private school from day one.

[kjoe]

I am swimming against the tide with this---it seems to say public schools are not better or worse than voucher schools---in spite of carrying twice as many kids with special needs. (they have to---private schools do not).

I was surprised about the homework thing----but there are several possible explanations for that.


Voucher study finds parity

Students achieve about as well as those at MPS

By ALAN J. BORSUK
[email protected]

Posted: Feb. 25, 2008

The first full-force examination since 1995 of Milwaukee's groundbreaking school voucher program has found that students attending private schools through the program aren't doing much better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
The study, released Monday in Madison, is the first from a five-year project aimed at providing a comprehensive evaluation of the voucher program, which this year is allowing more than 18,000 Milwaukee children from low-income families to attend private schools, 80% of them religious schools.
The authors caution repeatedly that stronger conclusions will come only when trends over several years can be examined, and not much should be read into this year's results.
But the early findings, based on examining standardized test results for voucher students and comparing them to those of a matched set of MPS students, are unlikely to be seen as good news by advocates of the program that was launched in 1990 with hopes of being a powerful step to increase educational success among the city's children.
The Milwaukee program is the largest, oldest and arguably most significant school voucher effort in the United States. As Patrick J. Wolf, the lead researcher in the project, wrote, "When one thinks of school choice, one thinks of Milwaukee."
"We have displayed a rough and limited snapshot of the average performance of Choice (Milwaukee Parental Choice Program) students in certain grades that suggests they tend to perform below national averages but at levels roughly comparable to similarly income-disadvantaged students in MPS," Wolf, a professor at the University of Arkansas, concluded.
At one point in the reports, researchers use the phrase "relative parity" in describing the small differences between the performance of MPS students and voucher students.
They say there is little evidence that voucher schools are "skimming the cream" by taking the best students from MPS, as some critics have claimed. What they conclude is that the performance of both MPS and voucher students is fairly typical for low-income students nationally, pointing at the broader American dilemma of how to achieve widespread educational success among poor children, minority children and children from homes where there is little history of educational success.
Apples-to-apples effort

The researchers' conclusions are based on test results from the 2006-'07 school year, when they gave a sample of voucher students the same tests given to public school students in Wisconsin and compared the results to those of a scientifically matched group of MPS students.
• Overall, they found, fourth-grade voucher students scored "somewhat lower" than MPS students but eighth-grade voucher students scored "somewhat higher."
• At all grades, both MPS and voucher students had overall test scores well below the 50th percentile nationally, and generally around the 33rd percentile, meaning they were generally scoring lower than two-thirds of students.
Results for individual voucher schools were not released as part of the study, despite calls from several legislators and others to see the private school results.
The study was conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project, part of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The main researchers included John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who conducted studies of the Milwaukee voucher program from 1990 to 1995, before the Legislature dropped the requirement for such studies.
Since Witte's last study, the program has grown enormously, but there has been a minimal amount of research on its effectiveness.
The program provides up to $6,501 per student to private schools in the city. State officials expect about $120 million in voucher payments to be made in this school year.
As part of a deal in 2006 between Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican legislative leaders, the voucher program was allowed to grow to as many as 22,500 students, but the private schools were required for the first time to administer nationally accepted standardized tests, and the School Choice Demonstration Project was authorized to launch its study.
In his summary, Wolf calls the research "the most comprehensive evaluation of a school choice program ever attempted."
Some surprises

Researchers released the first year's analysis in the form of four reports dealing with finances of the voucher program, characteristics of the schools involved, student performance, and parent and student opinion of both MPS and voucher schools.
Some of the findings confirm assumptions about the program - for example, that religion is a major reason why parents enroll children in private schools. Other findings are more surprising - for example,

that MPS parents who were surveyed were more likely than voucher parents to help their children with homework,

and that teachers in voucher schools had more experience on average than MPS teachers.
One trend the researchers found is that the variation in scores on tests among MPS schools tended to be much narrower than the variation among private schools. In other words, it could be that the range of quality among voucher schools is much wider - from very weak to outstanding - while the range of schools in MPS tends to stick closer to the system averages. That would square with observations of classes in both MPS and the voucher schools made by education reporters for the Journal Sentinel, especially in a major reporting project on the voucher program in 2005.
The researchers emphasize that the results are a snapshot that does not address many possible factors behind the differences. "It would be a mistake for readers to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the MPCP based on these simple annual descriptive statistics," the report says.
How families compare

Surveys of students and parents in MPS and the voucher schools found that voucher and MPS students are about equally likely to be living with both parents (38% and 36% respectively).
Voucher parents are notably more likely to be involved in activities at their children's schools, such as doing volunteer work or taking part in parent/teacher organizations, but MPS parents are more likely than voucher parents to help their children with homework or read books with them, the study found.
Both MPS and voucher parents express high levels of satisfaction with their children's schools, but voucher parents are much more likely to say they are "highly satisfied," while MPS parents are more likely to pick the "satisfied" response.
Witte, one of the most experienced school choice researchers in the U.S., said the high level of parental satisfaction with the voucher schools is an important aspect of answering the question of whether the program is successful.
The researchers found that voucher schools are, on average, much smaller than those in MPS overall and have smaller class sizes, a factor that clearly appealed to the parents who were surveyed.
Of 120 schools examined by the researchers, 95 identified themselves as religious and seven were classified as non-religious but operating within a religious tradition. Thirty-six of the schools were Catholic, 26 Lutheran and 22 were from other Christian denominations.
The reports say that 43% of MPS teachers have a master's degree or higher, compared with 29% in the voucher schools. But 66% of voucher school teachers have at least five years of experience, compared with 56% in MPS.
The reports do not include figures on what percentage of voucher school teachers have state certification or college degrees, both points of debate about the program. State law does not require private school teachers to meet those standards - it requires only that they have high school diplomas - but a relatively new requirement that the voucher schools become accredited by independent agencies is expected to result in the near-elimination of teachers without college degrees.
While cautioning that the figures are a bit uncertain, the researchers came up with student/teacher ratios of 13.6 to 1 for voucher schools and 16.6 to 1 for MPS.
While there is not much difference between MPS and voucher parents when it comes to the percentage who say their children have physical disabilities, there is a significant difference when it comes to other special education needs.
"The percentage of respondents who said that their child had a learning disability is twice as large in the MPS sample (18.2%) than in the MPCP sample (8.7%)," the researchers wrote. They say some of the difference might be due to differences between the two streams of schools in labeling children with special needs.
MPS officials have said frequently in recent months that the public schools are shouldering a far larger portion of special education students than the private schools are, and that the trend is causing major stresses on MPS.
Fiscal impact

Among other findings, the researchers' report on finances concludes that the way the voucher program is funded puts a greater burden on Milwaukee property-tax payers, while actually providing financial help to property-tax payers in the rest of the state and some reduction in state income taxes.
In simplified form, the reasons are that voucher students receive less public money than MPS students, while the formula for how to come up with the public money puts a larger load on Milwaukee property taxes than MPS students put.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and others have argued for fixing the "funding flaw" in the voucher program to help city taxpayers. Action by the Legislature last fall provided partial relief.
The research project is being paid for with private funds, primarily from major foundations, including at least three that are firmly identified with advocacy for school choice programs such as Milwaukee's. They are the Walton Foundation, funded by Wal-Mart heirs and based in Arkansas; the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee; and the Kern Family Foundation, a relative newcomer to the scene, based in Waukesha.
Plans call for reports in future years that will examine such questions as how much progress students in the voucher program are making from year to year, and how that compares with a comparable MPS group. Ninth-graders identified in the 2006-'07 school year will be followed to determine graduation rates and other outcomes several years from now.
"Stay tuned," Wolf said.

[Zythrst]

I personally would switch to one of the other schools. Thats just me tho. I also wouldn't send any of my future kids to public school.

I was tempted to yank mine out of public school in 10th grade (this year) but I don't want to hear, "you took me away from all my friends when I was 16" for the rest of my life.

Oh of course how silly. Those don't cost any money these days do they?

[bigJOE]

Thanks for all the input, guys and gals. much appreciated. Talked with my younger brother earlier today, and he explained it all to me. basically said it's a bunch of hogwash. he also told me that's he's subbed at the school my son will be attending and said it's a fine school. as some of you said, we'll see what his teacher is all about.

i don't think i'll be thinking about private schools. no offense to anyone, i'm sure some parents send their kids to private schools with best intentions in mind. but i think it's a status thing for most parents who send their kids to private schools.

again, thank you for all of your input

[chiguy]

it depends on why they're on that list, sometimes its not that major, but other times it could be

Here is one of the main problems with this law that no one ever talks about -- the supposedly "objective information" they provide is not that easy for a lot of people to digest. For all you know they haven't been able to get one-eyed transexual Mexicans to boost their math score enough over the last five years, but everyone else is kicking ass. You can find out, of course, but not everyone really understands some of the distinctions the law makes.

Our local school district isn't "failing" but people move away from it because of "low test scores." However, when you start comparing programs with the supposedly better alternatives, we have a lot of things no one else can offer -- two years of half-day pre-kindergarten, a program where every kid plays a stringed instrument for a year, advanced reading instruction for kids as early as kindergarten, bilingual education, and regular enrichment education. Plus, our teachers are better qualified and better educated than those in neighboring districts.

You tell me which one you'd rather have your kid in, the one with lower on average test scores, more diversity, and better programs or the one with higher test scores, no diversity, and almost no programs.

[Schwahalala]

Big Joe -

This is kindergarten in the fall right? Then your issues are different.

It's almost impossible to mess up kindergarten but it can be done. The test scores that earned the failing grade are probably from 3rd graders and up and at the earliest 1st graders.

You need to find out your schools test scores. You can get these on line by putting in the school name usually and test scores.

After you find out exactly what these were you can make your decision. I would probably not put a kindergartner on a school bus if I could help it. But if the test scores were really low - I'd have to look elsewhere for an education after the 2nd grade.