On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 09:01:34 -0400, Sam Scheiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am involved in our local school district affairs and can provide a bit > more on the ludicriousness of this whole effort. My school disrtict > (Arlington, VA) is consistently rated as one of the best in the country. We > have been working for many years doing exactly what the NCLB wants. Yet, > many of the schools in our district have just been rated as "not successful" > (or whatever the term is) because in June, AFTER the district had completed > its standardized testing in May, the Dept of Ed changed the rules about > which English-limited students could be excluded. So, 95% of the subgroup > was not test, and FAILURE. The rule is that ALL students, even if they > arrived in the district 1 month earlier with NO English skills must be > included in the test. > > The benchmarks that have been set are totally unrealistic. This year, the > pass rate is 60%, but it rises to 100% within just a few years. Our district > has been working very hard for several years to raise test scores, both > overall and among identified subgroups. It is very difficult and 100% is a > guarantee of failure. > > As others in this thread have already expressed, it seems as if this is a > policy which is either monumentally idiotic on the face of it, or > deliberately designed to attack the public school system. Take your pick: > incompetence or a vast right-wing conspiracy. I am not sure which is worse.
I think it is designed to hurt those localities and states which have high immigrant populations, which conveniently, are almost all Democratic politically. . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
