In the spirit of "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it", some folks might be interested to know that when I came on the school board in 1992, there was no curriculum department in MPS and then-Supt. Ferrera was just presenting test results from 18 months earlier to the board. In other words, the May 1990 results were first presented in the early months of 1992. At that time there was no attempt to link the test results to any instructional planning or remediation. Board members had a mighty struggle on their hands to shorten the reporting time to something meaningful, but with Peter Hutchinson's cooperation we eventually shortened that reporting time to about 6 weeks. That made it possible to identify schools and individual students who needed help before another year had passed. When the state introduced the so-called 8th Grade Tests, MPS was caught flat-footed with no remediation plans. During the year that followed, we learned some things and made changes, notably: 1) We learned that the 8th Grade Test was statestically correlatable to performance on the 2nd grade CAT. This was important because it enabled us to identify by the end of 2nd grade those students who would need more help/instruction if they were to be ready to pass the 8th Grade Tests six years hence. 2) We also learned that we needed a vigorous remediation plan for those who weren't on track. We had already restored the curriculum and instruction department several years before, so with the best of intentions, we put together a very focused summer school program and invited/urged low-performing students to attend. As Ross Taylor said, "They stayed away in droves." After a couple of years of struggling with that we wanted to know why fewer than 4 out of 10 low-performing students were participating. The responses from families tended to be things like "He's got more important things to do", or "It interferes with our summer plans". The answers we got were not encouraging. An interesting footnote - maybe I mentioned it before - is the Baltimore Public Schools Study, a longitudinal study carried out annually since sometime in the 80's, done by Johns Hopkins University that assesses kids twice a year, once in September, once at the end of the instructional year. It has found consistantly that the "gap" grows during the summer when social/economic disparities are not mitigated by the experience of attending school daily, but it does not grow much during the school year for kids who attend school regularly. If anyone wants a link to that study, please contact me offline. Ann Berget Kingfield REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list.
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