Staub Sense

This morning I opened up my newspaper and there was a big headline, ” Hillside student promotions questioned“. According to the article 13% of students at Hillside were “socially promoted” meaning that they went to the next grade in spite of failing grades. McLaughlin had 7.5% and Southside had 4.3%. There were no numbers for Parkside but the previous year there was a 4.2% rate.

Of course this is only a part of the story. We have no idea how many kids were retained in any of the middle schools, or what the circumstances were for these students. Under current policy students can be retained once at elementary and once in middle school. That will change next year due to a new policy passed by the board this year. Students will be able to be held back twice at each level, and heads will roll if they aren’t.

The great thing about data is that it gives you a bird’s eye view of the situation and enables you to see trends. However, in order to really understand the root causes, you need to examine what Dr. Brennan calls the “ground truth”.  Dr. Brennan is planning to meet with the Assistant Principals to learn more about these cases.

It may be that a disproportionate number of Hillside parents know that retention in middle school increases the likelihood that a student will eventually drop out of school 19 fold and, when consulted by the school, they insisted that their children be moved forward.  And then there is the Hillside parents’ prayer, “If we can just get them to Central, they’ll be fine.”

It may be that lot of kids in Lynn Manning’s class flunked English and they felt that it was more likely caused by the teacher’s personal problems than the kids’ abilities or attitudes, and it would be unfair to sentence a group of 12-year-olds to a lifetime of failure, poverty, and potential incarceration on account of it. Although Debra Langton doesn’t buy that, in this morning’s paper she said, “I don’t see where staff issues had anything to do with the performance of a child.” Seriously?

It may be that a significant number of students have already been retained once in middle school and under current policy they can’t be retained again. Besides, is middle school an appropriate place for a 16-year-old.

When I look at the numbers what I want to know is, why are so many kids receiving failing grades? How do we get more kids to pass?

I looked at the NECAP scores for Hillside and the kids actually do better than the district average in most cases.

Grade 7

Grade 8

Level 4=Proficient w/ distinction  Level 3=Proficient  Level2=Partially Proficient  Level1=Substantially below proficient

The flip side of this is why are so many kids passing who have not mastered the skills? However, given Debra Langton’s statements that “They are just not doing the work; they don’t care.  At least a consequence could be summer school.” It sounds like this is more about exacting retribution on kids who don’t do as they are told than it is about acquisition of skills or knowledge.

On closer examination of the Grade 8 math scores it is apparent that there is something amiss in Manchester.

As you know, the school district wanted to implement a new math instruction program next year, but the school board did not approve it. Something about not having any money.  I don’t understand what that $3 million textbook loan is for, if it isn’t for things like this. Right now our middle school math teachers have to put together their own program based on the state standards. They have to develop their own materials and instructional strategies. It can take years to figure out what is effective and what isn’t. With a proven math program, the basics are there and they have already been vetted for efficacy. This way instruction is consistent from classroom to classroom and school to school, and it minimizes the chance that kids will miss a critical concept as they move from grade to grade. As teachers gain more experience they build on it. If a substitute has to come it, it is easier to keep kids on track. Last year at Hillside there were 2 sixth grade teams that each had long-term substitutes in three different subjects.

This is just one more example of the culture clash between the employees of the school district who are focused on improving instruction by getting more professional development and better instructional materials, and the school board who are operating with a world view from 1972.

Personally, I’m tired of these insinuations that the kids are the problem. Our children are not intellectually deficient. They are not the spawn of the devil. We are not raising them like hyenas and all of them, regardless of their circumstances, deserve a shot at a decent education. Our elected officials need to stop blaming the children and fix the system, even though children can’t vote.

Maybe we need to grade the school board before the next election to see if they deserve to be promoted/re-elected.

The other night I attended the school board meeting. I try not to let it get me down but the other night I just couldn’t help it.

The Mayor has decided that he wants to shut down the school system’s IT department and have their responsibilities taken over by the city’s IT department. Currently the school district has a staff of 6 people who maintain the school district’s 1000 computers  (many of which are more than a decade old) and are now working on implementing the Student Information System and the much sought after by me, Parent Portal.

Of course, Ted Gatsas has tried to eliminate school district departments in the past and will probably keep trying  to make the school district into a city department until he is 100. And that is why I was so discouraged. It’s like the movie Ground Hog Day. We never seem to be able to move on. Interestingly, this whole tug of war started over a computer system. Way back in the last century the city installed a new financial management software program that turned out not to be very good. The school district was not getting the information that it needed and the superintendent, Len Bernard, got raked over the coals by the school board for overspending a special education account by $150,000.

This led to the school district and city going to court to separate the two entities and all the nasty divorce-like activities that occurred in the aftermath. Ten years later it still keeps coming up like a bad meatball sandwich. It is a distraction and it continues to keep us from focusing on what is important.

The mayor says this is being done to make city government more efficient. The city currently has a staff of 21 people in their IT department and I suppose making them do twice as much work would make city government more efficient.

However, I don’t think a pared down IT department is what we need. This is the 21^st Century, so rather than looking at technology as a financial drain on our system we need to think of it as our greatest potential asset when it comes to improving student achievement and getting more of a return on our education dollars.

Yesterday I was reading an article on the Edutopia Blog. In describing a “good” school they said,

“Carstens has done just about everything right: A stellar leader works closely with her devoted staff to give every child personal attention; they use data to adapt their teaching to students’ diverse needs; and teachers work in teams to ensure that no student falls between the cracks”

The key to making this happen is technology. All of the assessment information from teachers and specialists will go into the Aspen Student Information System and then teachers and administrators will be able to use the information to identify kids who are falling behind and get them caught up. From what I have read, it is critical that this information be made available to teachers immediately and in a form that is easy to use.

This is how modern urban school districts turn themselves around and because it is so critical I believe that the people who are in charge of it should answer to the superintendent.  This work might not be such a high  priority if the people working on it are city employees. Think about how long it takes to get building repairs done.

There were a few of the tech people from the schools at the board meeting as well. Debi Rapson, who is the person who does our Parent Guide, started teaching computer graphic design at Memorial this year. She pointed out that the Photoshop software her students use is 7 releases behind the current version. Most of the PC’s in her building are running Office 97. If the goal of our schools is to prepare students as future employees, why are we training them to use software from the last century?

Most of our computers and software are old and outdated and our IT people function much like the car mechanics in Havana who labor to keep those 57 Chevy’s on the road. Maybe we should use some of the $3 million loan from the aldermen to buy new equipment and software. Then our IT people can focus on developing ways to use technology to improve instruction and student achievement instead of replacing parts and putting in patches to make the software work.

Computers have been around in education for a while, but it has only been in the last decade that educators have discovered how they can be used to understand student needs and personalize education. This is very exciting and the people who have embraced it have been able to do remarkable things. We should be among them.

Yesterday I read in the paper that the school board will be discussing changing the policy on student keeping kids back. and ending “social promotion”.  At the last Mayor’s Night Out several parents and teachers expressed concern that students in our middle schools were not being adequately prepared for High School. The response from several school board members was that if students are not ready for high school they should be retained. This set off some alarm bells for me because of my interest in dropout prevention and improving graduation rates.

I went back and looked at the research and found this brief overview from the Children’s Institute in Rochester, NY. of longitudinal studies of regarding risk factors for dropping out of school.

Who will dropout from school? Key Predictors from the Literature.

Here are a few key excerpts:

 Grade retention is a major predictor of dropping out. Grade retention, a variable largely under the control of schools, was identified in multiple studies at every grade level. Almost all children who had multiple grade retention dropped out.

• Repeating a grade is associated with a seven-fold increase in dropout risk, and this is with concurrent measures of school performance, children’s attitudinal and behavioral school engagement, and parents’ psychological supports all controlled.

• Repeating first grade increases dropout risk by 300%,

• Grade retention merits to be singled out as a particularly powerful predictor.”Indeed, among multiple repeaters (36% of all repeaters in the Beginning School Study), dropout approaches a certainty: 80% overall; 94 % for those retained in elementary and middle school.”

• In middle school grade retention increased the risk of dropping out nineteen-fold.

Much of this research took place between 1989 and 2005. Very little has been published since that time. I think the evidence was so conclusive that grade level retention is not an effective strategy for longterm student success, that most researchers have moved on to identifying practices that are helpful.

 Meanwhile, in the alternate universe of the District Improvement Plan, Manchester educators are working on making the program of studies more effective in educating our children and preparing them for the next phase of their education. At the last Curriculum and Instruction meeting the middle school math curriculum specialist spent an hour describing how our current math program is deficient and that new one will match the state standards and provide teachers with better instructional materials and training.

 There is also an on-going program to improve writing instruction at the middle schools in conjunction with Plymouth State University. At the elementary level the district is working on implementing the RtI model, where students who fall behind are identified and offered intervention.

 As for kids who fail every subject. I think the middle schools need to better identify what their goals are for students and engage parents as partners in the process. The way our middle schools engage parents now is not effective. Teaching middle school is a lot like wrestling alligators. Most of us wouldn’t even attempt it.  It requires a lot of finesse and you need someone to watch your back. We need to accept the fact that gators are gators, and if we all know the drill, have confidence in one another, and agree on the expected outcome, we can work together.

 We recently had a high profile case where more than 100 6^th graders were deprived of an entire year of effective language arts instruction. Are they prepared for 7^th grade? Some will be, because they have parents with the resources to teach them everything they were supposed to have learned in school. But a lot of our kids rely on the teacher for all of their education. Do we make them pay the consequences by retaining them and in the process increase the risk that they won’t finish high school or do we go out of our way to make it up to them and offer them intervention? As an aside, it is probably more cost effective to do the intervention than to pay for a full extra year of school.

 We need to stop making decisions based on personal opinion, speculation, and ancient and obsolete “conventional wisdom”.  Instead we need to make our choices based on sound research and recognized best practices.

Last week I got a message from someone asking me why I hadn’t said anything about the recent goings on at Hillside. I guess, rather than talking about the problem I wanted to look at the situation from a systemic perspective and figure out some solutions.

I would like to think that everyone agrees that people who are under the influence or otherwise impaired by substance abuse should not be in charge of a classroom.  In addition to the effect it has on their ability to provide instruction, you have to wonder how they would react in an emergency.

In the last two months three teachers from Hillside have found themselves on the front page of the Union Leader because of drug or alcohol abuse. What I learned from this is that we don’t have good procedures in place for dealing with teachers who have substance abuse problems. Sadly, given the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse in our society, the law of averages says that these are not the only 3 district employees who have substance abuse problems.

There is an Employee Assistance Program for teachers. Addictions are considered a disability. From what I  understand, teachers who are identified as having problems with drugs or alcohol must go through a prescribed treatment program before returning to the classroom. If they relapse or re-offend they can be let go.

Just because someone has completed a treatment program, does not mean they are ready to return to work. I don’t know who evaluates people before they return to work and I don’t know who is supposed to be monitoring them once they are back in the classroom. When problems are identified, the interests, welfare, and safety of students must take precedence over all other considerations. Anything less erodes confidence, trust, and respect for educators.

This is a serious problem and I think that the MEA needs to step up to the plate and work with administrators to update the policies and practices for dealing with teachers who have substance abuse problems. I know they are a labor union, but I think they also need to function as a professional association to protect the reputation of the vast majority of teachers who come to school sober, straight, and prepared to do their best for students. Sometimes people need to be counseled out of the profession.  The public is not allowed into the schools and we must rely on the educators to keep our kids safe. School Board member Arthur Beaudry has suggested mandatory drug and alcohol testing for teachers, if teachers are unwilling to police themselves and uphold professional standards, maybe we should consider it.

Ten years ago when Lynn Manning, a newly hired teacher at Parkside, woke up next to her principal after they both passed out during a night of drinking, the Union Leader called and asked me to comment. At the time I said that teachers are adults and drinking is legal, so it really isn’t anybody’s business if teachers drink. If I knew then that in ten years Lynn Manning’s substance abuse problems would destroy her life, deprive over 100 eleven-year-olds of a full year of education, and cast the reputable teachers and staff in our schools in such a bad light, I probably would have responded differently. In fact, I know I would. In the past couple of years I learned that I had two friends who were alcoholics. It killed one of them. I’ve resolved  never to let that happen again, if I can help it.

I think that the employees of the Manchester School System need to re-examine their attitudes toward alcohol and drug use. Turning a blind eye doesn’t help anyone. I’m not suggesting that we fire everyone who comes to school with a headache the day after the Super Bowl. Teachers and Administrators, if you see a colleague who is turning to alcohol or drugs to deal with depression or stress or chronic pain, in school or out, speak up! Get them some help before they end up with their mug shot on the front page of the Union Leader or worse.

 These are the symptoms of alcoholism

I went to the School Board meeting last night to see the report presentation by the Mayor’s Task Force on Student Alignment. Here is a link to the Union Leader story. Here is a link to the report.

The Task Force was overwhelmingly in favor of pursuing the conversion of our current system of K-5 elementary schools and 6-8 middle schools to a city-wide K-8 system. Only Katharine Labanaris dissented from the decision. They also said that they believed redistricting was in order to alleviate overcrowding at Weston School.

The Task Force based their recommendation on interviews with Hooksett Superintendent Charles Littlefield, who oversaw the transition to K-8 schools in Methuen; Milford Superintendent Robert Suprenant, who used to be Hooksett’s Superintendent; and our own Dr. Brennan.  They also spoke with Pam Gaucher from the City Planning Department about planned housing construction projects.

They visited St. Casimir School, a K-8 parochial school in Manchester, which is led by Sr. Frances Marion, a member of the Task Force. They did not visit any other schools or speak with anyone else that they reported.  If they had more time they might have done more research. The Task Force originally was given until April 15 to finish their work and come up with their recommendations. However, the Mayor asked that they speed up the process and give their report earlier because there were budgetary issues that would be affected. I do not know the details of what those issues are.

The school board questions were focused on issues of cost, whether existing buildings would need to be renovated or replaced, how traffic would be affected, and whether equal opportunities would be available to all students in all buildings. They also asked for a clarification of how they defined the term  ”neighborhood school”.

Rumors have been swirling that this system would be piloted on the West side first.  That was mentioned in the report as a possibility. Task Force member Rich Girard said he thought that was a good idea because there are 4 schools on the West Side, 2 that are overcrowded, and 2 that have unused capacity.

The Task Force felt that a facilities audit would need to be done to answer the questions that were raised. In general, I would say that the board felt that more research was in order before committing to such a plan.

I don’t know what will happen next.   It was unclear whether the Task Force would continue their work or whether they are done.  I think that if parents plan to engage in this process we need to bring a positive and proactive plan to the table about the next steps. Otherwise we will be perceived as obstructionists. If you have any thoughts about how the school district should proceed with this process, let me know.  Maybe some of us could get together to come up with a response.

In the meantime, I have included some links to various studies and websites.

Here is the site that the Salt Lake City School district put up when they were considering K-8 conversion in 2006. They still have mostly middle schools and one K-8, but there is lots of good information particularly on the” Where can I get more information?” page.

Here is an article about  a recent decision to change to  ”neighborhood” schools in Wake County, North Carolina.

Also this report from the Christian Science Monitor on  new findings by EdSource on effective education of 6th-8th graders. Here is a summary of the cited report  Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades: Why Some Schools Do Better.  They based the study on 303 schools in California, some middle schools, some Jr. High Schools, and some K-8.

Here are the findings in a nutshell.

What differentiates the higher-performing schools most from the lower-performing schools is a shared district and schoolwide culture that: 

• places its primary focus on improvements in academic outcomes for all students, from the lowest performing to the highest;
• designs its instructional program to prepare all students for a rigorous high school education.

Recently my time and energy have been devoted to the Community Dialogue for the Common Good.  As you know, Manchester has become more diverse in recent years.

A group of us, the Manchester Undoing Racism Network, has been meeting for several years to explore and discuss issues regarding race in our community. We contacted the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice to help us put together a community dialogue process.

 The community-wide dialogue is a forum that has been used effectively across the United States since the 1980s to gather community members from all racial and ethnic backgrounds in an open and honest exchange of each other’s backgrounds and experiences in the community. Together, participants develop solutions to community concerns. Similar dialogues have already taken place in Concord and Nashua.

Our Community Dialogue for the Common Good will kick off on Friday, March 26^th from 6-8 PM at the Police Athletic League Community Center. At that time participants will break off into smaller groups, which will meet once a week for the following three weeks to engage in in-depth discussions. These groups will meet at different times and locations to accommodate people’s schedules. On April 22 we will hold a culminating event where the groups will report their results.

At this time of year I naturally find myself thinking about my ancestors.  It was a little more than a century ago that my grandparents emigrated from Europe. My father’s parents were from the west coast of Ireland and my mother’s parents were from Lithuania. Interestingly, my grandmother and aunt are in the Historic Association’s mystery photo in the Union Leader this week.

At my age I was lucky enough to have known my older relatives from the old country,  my Aunt Nora, who was the youngest of three sisters and a brother who came to Manchester from Clifden, Ireland; my mother’s father, who lived with us until he died; and his brother, my Uncle Mike, both of whom left Lithuania to avoid being conscripted into the Russo-Japanese War.

One thing I remember distinctly about growing up in the 60’s is that if you were lucky enough to have a living Memere, or YiaYia, or Babci  form the old country, chances are she didn’t speak English very well. And all of our parents who grew up in those families were -dare I say it?- BILINGUAL!  I cannot begin to describe how much richer my life has been for having known them.  If they had not instilled my parents and me with a reverence for my heritage I would not be sitting here right now listening to all this didle- doodle- didle- dum music, and enjoying it immensely.

 It never ceases to crack me up when I hear people say, “Today’s immigrants need to learn to speak English, like my grandparents did.” To hear them tell it, their grandparents learned the language on the boat on the way over.

Not true! The Amoskeag Mills made it possible for immigrants to work in environments where everyone spoke the same language, usually not English. Immigrants were also able to found institutions to maintain their cultural heritage. Manchester had a French language newspaper that published three times a week for 50 years, and every ethnic group in the city had at least one social club. In addition, the French, Irish, and Polish had an army of Catholic religious women who were willing to educate their children in ways that were linguistically and culturally appropriate. They were paid a dollar a day. Talk to any person of French-Canadian Heritage over the age of 50 and ask them about school- half the day was in French and half the day in English.

The other big example of collective cognitive dissonance is the assertion that everyone got along.

I did my master’s thesis on the early experience of Manchester’s Irish immigrants in the 1840’s and 50’s. Believe me, there were problems. According to the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, one day one of the teachers at the Park Street School made a negative comment about Father McDonald. The students responded by throwing him out the window. Later, they came back and broke all the windows. The school district had to invest in shutters to keep them from doing it again, every night.

Even though the Know-Nothings (those would be Tom Tancredo’s ancestors) swore there would never be a convent in New Hampshire, the relief was palpable when Mother Warde  showed up with her Sisters to take charge of the little Irish ragamuffins.

And speaking of Know-Nothings, let’s not forget about the incidents in July 3^rd and 4^th of 1854 when a mob of drunken Yankee hooligans descended on the Irish neighborhood of Manchester, throwing the Irish and their belongings into the streets. After that,  they turned their attention to St. Anne’s Church, intending to burn it down. Fortunately, John Maynard, a local builder and the neighborhood fire captain who lived across the street, did not like the idea of his holiday weekend being disrupted. He mounted the steps of the church, some say with a pistol in his hand, and turned the mob away.

The really important part of this story is what happened next. In the wake of the Know-Nothing riots  the community leaders came together to define what kind of community we wanted to live in. Efforts were made to improve understanding between the two groups and develop the resources to help the new immigrants help themselves.

And that is the way we have handled with every other wave of immigration. In the 1920’s my neighbor’s father, who studied classical Greek at Brown University, used to go with another Alumni down to the coffee houses to teach the Greek men to speak English.

One thing we should keep in mind is that our goals should not be to take care of immigrants but rather to empower them to prosper on their own.

Everyone is invited to participate in the dialogue to learn about the many new people who have come to Manchester - about their experiences, about their aspirations for themselves and their families, and about how they can contribute to the fantastic tapestry that is Manchester. I think you will find that there is more that we have in common than that sets us apart.

 Visit our Facebook page  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=495720780370

On Saturday President Obama announced his replacement for No Child Left Behind. Here is a link to the blueprint for the new legislation which was sent to Capitol Hill today.

The new goal for our schools is for everyone to graduate and be ready for a career or college when they do. The requirement that 100% of students reach proficiency on reading and math are gone, but standardized tests for reading and math remain. Progress will be judged by improvement of individual students. And teacher quality will be no longer be measured by teacher credentials, but rather by an evaluation process that includes student performance.

Here is a really good NY Times article that includes reaction from various stakeholder groups.

In looking at the blueprint I was pleased to see this

“We must recognize the importance of communities and families in supporting their children’s education, because a parent is a child’s first teacher. We must support families, communities, and schools working in partnership to deliver services and supports that address the full range of student needs.”

Of course talk is cheap, and the new bill doesn’t include any funding to support the state Parent Information Resource Centers. It is nice to say that parents should be included but what is the mechanism? We know that good, effective parent involvement improves student achievement but parents are often in the dark about exactly what to do, and educators are not always adept at helping us. We all need help getting to where we need to be.

This is also an issue of accountability. We know that no one has more at stake in our schools than parents.  We should play a critical role in accountability, but with no one to help build our capacity to understand what the data says, it might as well be hidden. Moreover, the federal government is not providing all the money needed for reform. Most of the money and decisions are still generated locally. Who will insure that local resources are being used  in ways that will lead to lasting improvement?

This is not a done deal and the Congress can reinstate the PIRC’s. E-mails to the NH delegation might help if you are so inclined.

Jeanne Shaheen -Max_Giella@shaheen.senate.gov

Carol Shea Porter - Carolyn.Armstrong@mail.house.gov

Judd Gregg- http://gregg.senate.gov/  click through on the contact link.

Also, last week in the newspaper there was a story indicating that the Mayor wants his Student Realignment Task Force ready with their report on March 22. This means that it is unlikely that there will be any opportunity for a public hearing to have input into their report. Does anyone know if they have done any outreach to parents?

In any event, the Superintendent and some school board members will be at Hillside on March 16 starting at 7 PM for a parent forum.  That might be your only opportunity to raise your concerns.

In spite of the snow last night the school board and aldermen held their joint meeting to discuss the budget. Mayor Gatsas revealed his plan to pay for text books and “information technology”. The city will lend the school district $3.2 million dollars from the city’s special revenue account, which will be repaid over the next 8 years. The first payment of $432,000 will be due in 2012.
One of the things that the DINI curriculum committee did was to develop a textbook adoption plan. Under this plan textbooks for each subject would undergo a 5 year review cycle. In the first year a committee would research textbooks and compare them to the state standards. Two or three would be selected based on their coverage of the standards. In the second year the selected texts would be piloted in classrooms in the district. In the third year the books would be purchased and introduced into the classrooms. Teachers would receive professional development to support implementation. Over the next two years assessment data and teacher feedback would be collected to determine whether the text is meeting the needs of the students and teachers. The next year the review cycle begins again. Each subject area begins the cycle in a different year so you would never be buying more than one subject’s books in a given year. And if the committee finds that the books are still close enough they may decide that new books are not needed.
My question here is, will this money be used to buy additional copies of the outdated textbooks that no longer meet our needs, or will it be used to buy new textbooks that better reflect the new curriculum and the state standards? Are we ready to do that? Have we identified what we need? Will we have the opportunity to pilot texts before we invest in buying them?
One of the reasons we go through so much copy paper in the district is that the books don’t cover the material set out in the state standards. It also uses up time that the teachers could be spending working collaboratively to improve classroom instruction and student achievement.
This could be great or it could be a colossal waste of money. This is why we need a strategic plan. So that when money is available we can use it to move forward.

Since the coffee with the school board event has been postponed we will not be able to ask our questions. I am posting my questions here and I invite you to post your as well. The coffee event will be rescheduled and we can ask our questions then.  But if we don’t get the chance, we can at least put them out there in the ethernet.  Besides, this way they might have answers.

Here are my top three questions:

1) Modern 21st Century School reform and improvement practices are complicated. What is the school board doing to increase its capacity to understand modern best practice and to provide the necessary leadership to move the Manchester School district forward?

The NECAPS are out and I looked through them briefly to see how we are doing. Dr. Brennan presented some information at the District Leadership Team meeting last week. There is some encouraging news and some things we need to work on. 

I stole Dr. Brennan’s idea of making graphs showing progress, but I also added the current year’s state averages for comparison. For example, if you look at the high school math scores and see that only 27% of students scored proficient or above, it might give you a heart attack until you see that only 33% of 11^th graders  in the entire state scored proficient or above in math. We also have an average number of high school students scoring proficient or above in reading and although I didn’t make a chart, our high school students dominated the writing test. The average score in the state was a 6.5 and our average score was a 6.9. Central’s average score was a 7.4! Let’s have a little cheering and fist pumping for our high school teachers and students.

There was a story in the paper on Tuesday about how Goffstown High School improved their test scores considerably over last year by offering students incentives to do well and by having proctors who knew the students. Last year their scores were similar to ours, but his year 88% of the students scored proficient in Reading and 48% scored proficient in Math. It might be worth sending some spies over.

Mark Twain once said that there are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics. Nevertheless I really like looking at the data. Setting it up this way gives you the bird’s eye view of what is going on. You can look at progress at individual grade levels and you can follow cohorts of students by looking diagonally.  I noticed that the 4^th grade reading scores didn’t go up as much as the other grades for example. Does the curriculum at that grade level need to be adjusted? Do the teachers need additional resources or training? Is it that cohort of kids? They were at 59% in third grade and they are at 59% in 4^th. The cohort before them went from 61% in 3^rd, down to 58% in 4^th, and back up to 66% in 5^th. It just gives you something to think about.

Here are the graphs. Some of them got a little cut off on the side but you get the idea.

I used the district-wide scores but you can look at the scores for your individual schools  by visiting the NH DOE website

I also looked at the scores of ELL students. As you know, the school district sent a letter to the state asking that ELL students not be tested for two years after they come into the system and for an additional 3 years if they have never been to school.

I took exception to that. First, because we have serious, systemic problems that affect all of our children and we ought to focus on that and I don’t think it is right to single out a  group of students as the cause of our problems.

I also think that this promotes a one dimensional view of ELL students.  We are made to believe that more and more ELL students are flooding our system and that most of them have never been to school and neither have their parents. Well, that depends. The Somali Bantu were prohibited from getting an education because the larger ethnic group wanted to insure that the Bantu would be available for menial labor. Nevertheless, my friend Geraldine enjoys working with them becuse they are respectful and work hard. The most recent group of refugees from Bhutan  have many educated adults among them and they educated their children in the camps.  When I talk to people from the immigrant and refugee communities they think our perception that the United States is the only place in the world that has good schools is a little ethnocentric.

 I looked at a few of the most recent NECAP results  to see how the Limited English Proficiency students did. 37% of 3^rd grade LEP students were proficient in reading. Among the students in the second monitoring year after being mainstreamed, 92% were proficient in reading. Among English speakers it was 68%. While newcomers are exempt from the reading portion of the exam, they do take the math portion. A translator helps. In 4^th grade, 35% of LEP students were proficient, and 65% of English Speakers were.

I also tried to find total numbers of ELL students.  According to the NH DOE in 2000 there were 1,326 LEP students in our school district or 7.62%. In 2008, which is the last year they have data available, there were 942 LEP students or 5.78%. The actual percentage of LEP students is declining and I’m told that ½ of our ELL students are now American-born children of foreign-born parents, just like my mother.

I expect the next large group of ELL students will come from Haiti and they will have a variety of abilities. If they aren’t tested, we’ll never know. In the interest of transparency I think the public needs to know who the kids are in our schools and what their challenges are. ELL kids are not all alike, they have different backgrounds, different abilities, and different aspirations.

Luckily, when the ESEA act gets renewed a lot of the punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind will disappear, however standards based assessment and transparency are here to stay.