Comment about The Learning Curve (City Pages article) http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1133/article10648.asp Doug Mann
According to the US secretary of Education, Rod Paige, 79 Minnesota schools do not meet state standards. Of those substandard schools, 31 are in Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Public Schools administration, on the other hand, issued "measuring up" report cards which gave passing grades to schools that do not meet state standards, including Park View. These conflicting appraisals are explained away in The Learning Curve, which paints the MPS administration as the victim of unrighteous school bashing. According to The Learning Curve, >In spring 2001, Park View students took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment test. In August, the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning notified the school that its fifth-grade students had not shown "adequate yearly progress" in mathematics and that it was "needing improvement" in that part of the curriculum. That designation alone was enough to put Park View on Paige's list of failing schools. >What the test didn't factor in was that the student population at Park View changed significantly during the period that was evaluated. Of the 28 fifth graders enrolled in 2000-01, 15 had attended the third grade somewhere else. In other words, the Department of Children, Families and Learning was judging two different sets of kids. "What you had was a school that had a dramatic change in the configuration of students that they received," explains Rick Spicuzza, assistant director for research, evaluation, and assessment with the Minneapolis Public Schools. [The Learning Curve] As far as the district is concerned, only the progress of those 13 fifth graders continuously enrolled since the third grade really matters. >The 13 students who were enrolled at Park View continuously from third grade to fifth grade improved their math scores at a rate twice that of the district average. What's more, according to the Minneapolis Public Schools' 2001 Measuring Up report, Park View's overall performance, especially considering the demographic makeup of its student body, has been commendable. The school was given a rating of 2.8 on a 5-point scale, which puts it right in the middle of the pack in Minneapolis. The assessment takes into account 33 different variables, ranging from student safety to test results. (Spicuzza says that the 2002 report is not yet complete, but he believes Park View's ranking will jump to over 3.) The school also received two awards from the school district in recent years for student achievement. "This school has made great strides from where they were," Spicuzza maintains [The Learning Curve]. This is not the first time the district has inflated the rate of growth in math and reading for continuously enrolled students, and further claimed that continuously enrolled students were making "great strides," by comparing different sets of students from one year to the next. Typically, more students with below-average test scores are withdrawn from a school than students with above-average scores. The district used the same statistical trick in the 1998 Better Schools Referendum Report Card (dated January 1999) to falsely claim that students in the Minneapolis Public Schools were making gains in math and reading growth above the national norm. See "Perfuming the Pig," the text of a speech I gave at the December 15, 1998 meeting of the Minneapolis Board of Education http://members.tripod.com/educationright/id30.htm The "measuring up" report cards and the statements of district officials, including Carol Johnson, are designed to calm the waters and whitewash a school system where a majority of students are failing to thrive academically. That needs to change, and yesterday won't be soon enough. -Doug Mann, Kingfield and the new 8th ward Minneapolis School Board Candidate http://educationright.tripod.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
