Standardized Paradigm Shifting

"When our grandparents went to school, there was a finite amount of information," she said. Now, she said, the focus is "not so much that I have to learn everything there is to learn, but now I need to learn how to find what I need to know." (article linked below)

Is tech-literacy testable? According to ETS, the new skills are testable and standardized tests with these skills are being rolled out in many states. This is very exciting; imagine a Regents Exam with access to the internet.

Students might actually see some relevance, might scare some teachers though.

[Read the Entire Article]

“How far is the moon from the Earth?”

Today a colleague whom I have come to regard very highly told me a story. They spoke of a friend who, upon interviewing for a position in a District Attorney’s Office, was asked the question, “How far is the moon from the Earth?”

What skill would an aspiring assistant district attorney need to answer this question?

Those of you who know me are well aware of my feelings toward the NYS REGENTS exams. The best argument I have heard defending the test is that its not a test of content but of basic skills.

With this in mind I entertained the idea that I may be wrong. So I now look at the test as on of basic skills. Skills these students will need to be successful.

On the global history exam students were asked to analyze a political cartoon depicting the cultural reform of Peter the Great. Is it more likely for our students to be asked to analyze a political cartoon or to create and edit a video using movie maker? Is the skill of writing a thematic essay more highly regarded in our society or are creations like collaborative web 2.0 http://www.youtube.com/ or http://www.secondlife.com/ a more valuable asset to have? Should students be able to explain the difference between relative and exact location or should we teach them how to use "Google Earth", or program a "Magellan".

Having a test of skills isn't a bad idea, but our current exam system might be obsolete, giving false hope to those who "do well" and discouraging our future leaders with low standardized test grades.

I overheard a teacher comment, “They make these tests easier and easier, but the kids keep getting dumber and dumber.” Is this true? Or are the skills being tested further and further from those valued by our students and society?

The answer the interviewers for the assistant district attorney’s position were looking for wasn’t, “Gosh I don’t know.” It was, “Can you give me a minute?”, as they pulled out their Blackberry. (which teachers confiscate upon entry into exams).

New York Measuring Teachers by Test Scores

Can teachers only request to teach the good test takers?

NYTIMES:

"New York City has embarked on an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced, in which some 2,500 teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests.

The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers that they are being scrutinized based on student performance and improvement.

While officials say it is too early to determine how they will use the data, which is already being collected, they say it could eventually be used to help make decisions on teacher tenure or as a significant element in performance evaluations and bonuses. And they hold out the possibility that the ratings for individual teachers could be made public.

“If the only thing we do is make this data available to every person in the city — every teacher, every parent, every principal, and say do with it what you will — that will have been a powerful step forward,” said Chris Cerf, the deputy schools chancellor who is overseeing the project. “If you know as a parent what’s the deal, I think that whole aspect will change behavior.”"

ENTIRE ARTICLE

Finally Some Accountability ????

After reading the following article I began to ask myself what problem is this new DOE policy going to address? and what is the solution? If the change in policy is meant to help the HS system by filtering out reading an writing problems then I believe he is on to something. Freshmen classes would be more academically sound for the first year. I suspect however that sophomore reading and writing skills would be about the same.

However if the change is being put in place to genuinely help the struggling students I question this practice. With the advent of the smaller HS should not they be better equipped to handle the struggling student rather than the overcrowded middle school. Holding students accountable for failed instructional practices upon hearing strikes an awkward tone in my ears.

Imagine if a doctor punished patients for not getting better with the hope that they would not return for more medical care.

It sounds like the we are almost literally throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Excerpted from the NYTIMES:

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday unveiled strict new criteria for promotion to high school that could, if current testing patterns hold, put nearly a quarter of New York City’s eighth graders in danger of spending an extra year in middle school.

The new policy, which Mr. Bloomberg announced in his State of the City address, would require next year’s eighth graders to score at a basic level on standardized English and math exams, and to pass their classes in core subject areas in order to be promoted. It is stricter than similar policies that the mayor has put in place in the third, fifth and seventh grades, all in an effort to end the practice of social promotion, in which students are moved ahead despite academic problems."

READ MORE

School Commendations Come With a Critique

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: January 4, 2008

It was supposed to be a day to celebrate the city’s best schools. The schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, trekked to Public School 46 in Bayside, Queens, to announce that the schools that had received the highest marks on the city’s new school report card were to receive a windfall of extra money.

But when he invited Assemblyman Mark Weprin to the microphone, Mr. Weprin, a Queens Democrat, seized nearly five minutes of the news conference to lambaste the grading system and the Bloomberg administration’s focus on standardized testing to measure achievement.

“Our schools have turned — I know the chancellor is standing here, but — to Stanley Kaplan courses in a lot of ways,” Mr. Weprin said, referring to a large test preparation company.

Lacing his comments with apologies for being “impolite,” Mr. Weprin said, “Too much focus is trying to get the right answers on tests and not enough focus on, in my opinion, on learning. And a good teacher doesn’t just teach how to get the right answers, a good teacher inspires, and a lot of that is being lost in our schools.”

entire article

Dumb down class, asks principal memo

The following article is evidence of the danger of the paying for grades phenomenom that is sweeping the city. What do grades mean? This probably the result of passing rate reports. Is this an effective use of data?


By ETHAN ROUEN and ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 4:00 AM

The principal of an East Harlem high school last month stunned his
staffers by suggesting they dumb down their classes.

"If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class,
then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities,"
Principal Bennett Lieberman wrote in a Nov. 28 memo to teachers at
Central Park East High School. "You are setting your students up for
failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional."

The memo, obtained by the Daily News, urges teachers to review their
homework and grading policies, and reminds them that "most of our
students ... have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in
general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school
experience to our experiences growing up."

One teacher who received the memo said she and her colleagues were
"outraged," especially because the school is one of 200 where teachers
will receive $3,000 bonuses if their schools improve.

"It's like bribery," she said. "It's not the achievement. It's just
the grades."

Lieberman, a graduate of Mayor Bloomberg's elite Leadership Academy,
defended the memo and denied he was advocating lower standards.

"I pretty confidently stand by my words and don't expect my teachers
to dumb things down at all," he said. "The goal is to find where a
student is at and work with them from that point forward."

His school was in danger of being closed several years ago but has
bounced back after showing improvement on test scores. "Really good
things are happening here," he said.

Students shown the memo Wednesday were insulted.

"Why are they going to let some pass who don't deserve it? It's not
fair to those who want to work," said Estevan Cruz, 16, an 11th-grader.

Senior Richard Palacios, 17, said 65% of his classmates don't even
show up for school. "It's already too much of an easy ride," He said.
He estimated that only three or four of the 15 kids in his math class
routinely appear.

Teaching experts said he should be ashamed.
"I'm just appalled," said Deborah Meier, the educator who founded Central Park East High School in 1985 as an alternative school where, she said, "our expectations for all our children were the same."

Back when Meier ran the school, she said, "We would have used the example of the letter you are quoting as exactly what we were trying to fight against. I'm horrified."

Now a New York University professor, Meier said she's worried the memo came as a response to the city's new A-to-F grading system, which factors how many credits students accumulate per year. If more kids pass their classes, the school, which got a B this year, will get a higher grade.

"This is so wrong, I could cry," Meier said. "What's embarrassing ...
is that he could have put that in writing and not understood what he
was saying."

eeinhorn@nydailynews.com

PS thanks to Joanna Vogel, QHST '07, for bringing this article to our attention.

What are we Testing?

This is a must read for every teacher. A research study done by the Educational Testing Service (the people who make the test) admits that schools have little to do with the test results. If this is the case, and home life has such a traumatic impact on school success, why rate schools based on exams?

From today's NYTimes:

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school is judged as failing.

But how much is really the school’s fault?

A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could make a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.

The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.

“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of what was going on in their schools.

Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY

A QHST grad has this to say!

Put to the Test!

In response to a flawed test booklet (entire article):

“We need to recognize that the testing industry is under immense pressure at a time when scores are being given immense importance,” said Thomas Toch, who wrote a report last year detailing the problems of the American testing industry for Education Sector, an independent policy group, where he is a co-director.

I think its important that the testing company not be discounted on everything else they have done just because they did poorly on one test. Lets not throw the baby out with the bath water. One test should not make or break a company only k-12 kids should be held to such standards. Testing companies are doing so much good driving the non-critical thinking curriculum. Without these privateers of the American education system where would the media get all the sheep to lead to the consumer slaughter? We need these company's to inform teachers of what needs to be taught. Maybe if we divert more funds from the classroom, companies will do better?

Read the rest of the article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/education/20test.html?ref=education

Report Cards

I think its interesting that school administrators in a recent New York Times article are complaining that grades do not do justice to what schools are doing. These school report cards will not reflect any whole school. Teacher grades for students are due this week. Do our grades reflect our whole student? Quantifying quality is not easy.

“It is just so demoralizing to have a number or grade assigned that is just sort of trivializing things,” Ms. Foote said. “It doesn’t reflect, I think, the valuable work and the very complicated work that we do here.”

Throughout the city, principals are bracing for the release this week of report cards from the Education Department that will, for the first time, grade schools on a scale of A through F. Because the report cards will assess schools on how much individual students improve year to year, as well as on a complicated mixture of test scores and other factors, many of the grades are likely to upend longstanding reputations, casting celebrated schools as failures and lauding those that work miracles with struggling students. Some principals refer to the scores as a “scarlet letter.”

READ MORE


Look up a school's grade HERE

Not Who But What Is Left Behind

When I think of the things I remember most from school it was 8th grade science class with Ms Ambrosio. She would let be excused from all my other classes all day and help her with science lab. She was probably the most kind woman I ever met. She gave every student ample opportunity to succeed. I regret I never got in touch with her after I realized how important she was to me. I also will also never forget when Bro. Dicowski and Bro. Guillen shook my dad's hand at my High School graduation. I really never felt a part of my high school until that day. In college I befriended Professor Nieter at St. John's University and had a unique experience of how a man allowed his passion for science drive him to inspire groups of volunteers to learn through his modeling, and embrace the delicate wetlands that remarkably can thrive in urban settings. All of these things I carry with me into the classroom.

Why am I writing this? Who cares? Read the following:


Not Who But What Is Left Behind

By Barbara M. Stock

Our national obsession with standardized-test scores is dangerous. The idea that there is only One Right Answer, the answer to the test question, plants the seeds of authoritarian rule. Standardized tests encourage a standardized way of thinking. If there is only one right answer, there is no need to think, to question, to discuss. We breed compliance and complacency. We see challenges to authority as disloyal. The foundations of democracy break down.

I was shocked into this realization when my grandson phoned with a homework question. "What did you learn in school that helps you be a good citizen?" he asked. His question stopped me. A good citizen? In my day, teachers graded us for citizenship. A high grade meant the student was quiet. I was always talking. I earned high grades for academics, but for citizenship-unsatisfactory. It didn't matter. It didn't count in our grade point average, and GPA was what mattered. Citizenship was an empty word.

I grew up in the '50s, the era of the white picket fence and the gray flannel suit. We lived in fear-of Communism, of a Soviet invasion, of nuclear bombs. We stored canned goods in the basements of our homes and sat on the floor of the school basement with our heads between our legs for air-raid drills. Education was lock-step. In science class, we memorized a list of birds common to North America. The test required us to simply write the list. We never even saw pictures of these birds to match with the names. In English, we memorized rules of grammar. In history, we memorized dates, names of battles, names of colonies, names of presidents. There was only one right answer, and that was the answer that would get us an A on the test. I needed A's. As a first-generation American, I needed to get to college. I needed to succeed. Being a good American citizen meant getting a job and getting rich.

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SIDEBAR: Creating good American citizens rests on the character of our teachers-not the facts they teach, but who they are and how they teach.

------------------------
But America paid the price for One Right Answer. In the '50s, authorities often viewed with distrust those who questioned. In order to be heard, questioners shouted; confrontations became violent. The decade that followed was a decade of open rebellion. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the anti-war movement-all sprang from folks saying, "Don't tell me what to do. I can think for myself."

Education had to change, and it did. I was excited to see my children attend schools that encouraged them to think, to question, to listen and discuss various points of view, to learn how to learn. But our current overemphasis on standardized tests, penalizing teachers whose students don't perform well, pressuring students to learn the right answer-these are major steps backward.

I value good American citizens. I don't like orange alerts; they remind me of my childhood air-raid drills. I want to feel safe. I want to trust my neighbors. I want my children and grandchildren to feel secure and trusting. But back to my grandson's question: What did I learn in school that helped me become a good citizen? How did I learn the values underlying my loyalty and commitment to America?

First, I learned to think and ask questions, not from the lock-step teachers, but from the exceptions. Daily, on my way out the door to school, my mother reminded me, "If there's anything you don't understand, ask the teacher." My 2nd grade teacher, Miss Siegel, taught us how to think. She asked questions and pushed our class to think outside the facts. "What will happen if �" and "How would you like this story to end?" were heard regularly. Miss Pelaez, my junior high school English teacher, passed out blank paper and urged us to "write what comes to mind." She was undaunted by the McCarthy era. She did not worry about our thinking or writing something un-American. She validated free thinking.

I remember the day Mrs. Josephs, my high school English teacher, was called out of class to the principal's office. She had assigned For Whom the Bell Tolls; the principal told her to cancel the assignment because the text was sexually explicit. Instead, she posted a list of pages (with the sexiest scenes) and told us not to read them. That day I learned how to use creativity and humor under fire. I saw how she thought and worked with, not against, people holding different views.
I recall Mr. Morse, a college professor who had a strong belief in his students' ability to think. His classroom was silent; he listened intently to each student, and by his behavior taught us to listen to each other. That skill is invaluable to me in raising my family, building close relationships, and certainly in becoming an informed citizen.

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SIDEBAR: If there is only one right answer, there is nothing to be curious about.

-----------------------------

Second, I learned to develop a healthy emotional attitude. I appreciate Miss Allen, my junior high school vice principal, who welcomed me into her office and allowed me to vent. I was no good at conforming. I was hard on myself and angry toward others. I felt left out of cliques. I hated losing competitions. She took time to listen. She knew if I remained hurt, I would lash out and hurt others. Instead, she handed me Kleenex, often suggested a different perspective, and sent me back to class kinder to myself and to others. Teaching students to regurgitate answers overlooks the emotional needs of children. A good citizen must respond to those who are hurting. Otherwise, we risk their rage and are horrified at the current epidemic of youth violence.

Third, from all these teachers I learned to value an open mind. But permission to be curious, I learned first from Miss Aiken, my kindergarten teacher. With no pressures of accountability and progress, she allowed me to sit for hours on the window seat studying rainbows in cut crystals. I'm still as curious-about new ideas, new people. If there is only one right answer, there is nothing to be curious about.

How did I learn to be a good citizen? Not by staying silent in class. Not by memorizing facts. Creating good American citizens rests on the character of our teachers-not the facts they teach, but who they are and how they teach. In our time of "no child left behind," which places tremendous emphasis on standardization, I fear that the essential lessons for becoming a good American are precisely what are being left behind. I've yet to see a tombstone marking a grade point average or an SAT score.
----------------------

Barbara M. Stock is a clinical psychologist in private practice who has consulted on K-12 school programs and taught at the college level. She lives in Wilmette, Ill.

Joanna Vogel former QHST student has posted the following on her blog. The version I have here was found at mathforum.org .

Teacher Incentives

The Following appeared in the NY Times:

"The New York City plan is not a straightforward arrangement, in which individual teachers throughout a school system receive extra money based on the performance of their students. Rather, bonuses equivalent to $3,000 per teacher will be given to schools that meet overall performance standards.

Four-member “compensation committees” at each school, consisting of two teachers, the principal and a principal’s appointee, will decide how to divide the money. They can reward everyone equally or give more money to the teachers whose students’ scores rise the most.

The program is starting this year in 200 schools with high concentrations of poor children. It is expected to reach 400 schools next year. The schools have not been named yet.

So how, exactly, will the prospect (but not the guarantee) of earning $3,000 (or possibly earning far more, or nothing at all) change teachers’ decisions and behavior?"

OK here is my take on this... Is this implying that we as teachers are not doing enough already? Is a carrot going to make us run faster? I'm doing the best I can carrot or no carrot. The underlying assumption here seems to be that we as teachers can work harder if given more money. Show me the teacher that steps back and says, "Well if they paid me $3000 more I'd get them to pass." I think this is a union busting tactic and an insult to our profession.

After News Article on Test, Michigan Orders Retesting

The following article clearly shows how schools need to test more. We should pretest, then test. How are we supposed to know if these kids are smart? How are we going to separate the smart kids from the dumb kids? I'm glad 5th and 6th graders are being introduced into this stressful situation early, this way they are weeded out by HS. (if all this sounds absolutely ludicrous read on):

DETROIT, Oct. 12 — Michigan’s Department of Education is making thousands of fifth- and sixth-graders retake a part of the state’s standardized writing test because a newspaper published a brief article about the test that revealed the topics of two questions.

The retesting is expected to cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” a spokesman for the department, Martin Ackley, said Friday, at a time when Michigan is entangled in its worst-ever financial crisis. State lawmakers this month narrowly avoided a government shutdown by voting to raise taxes to help close a $1.75 billion budget deficit.

State officials say the article, published Tuesday in The Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper, could give an unfair advantage to students who had not yet taken the test. Not all schools administer the examination on the same day. The test, which determines compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law, has to be identical for all students.

The decision to retest has outraged parents and school district officials across the state, who say it wastes time and could lead to lower scores. The state is considering penalties against the Jackson Public Schools, which apologized for allowing a reporter inside a classroom during testing.

The situation has embarrassed The Citizen-Patriot, which has a circulation of 32,000 in south-central Michigan. The paper’s editor, Eileen Lehnert, said that the reporter, Chad Livengood, “did everything right” and that there was no intention to disclose sensitive information.

Ms. Lehnert also questioned the logic of schools’ not testing simultaneously in an era of text messaging and online social networking. “I feel awful,” she said. “But I can’t see, knowing what we knew then, what we possibly could have done differently.”

The three-week window during which schools can administer the test, known as the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, began Monday. Officials are unsure how many of the state’s 260,000 fifth- and sixth-grade students have already taken the section being recalled.

In past years, schools that violated testing protocol gave their students an emergency replacement version, Mr. Ackley said. But because people anywhere in Michigan could have read the article on the newspaper’s Web site, officials decided to give all schools a new writing test.

By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: October 13, 2007 NYTimes

What learning styles does the PSAT test for?

October 17th. Schools are open but NYC has decided to pay for all our 10th and 11th graders to take the PSAT. The College Board will create, and grade the exam. NYC school employees with distribute the exams, proctor the exams, collate the exams and re-collect the exams. NYC guidance conselors will be overwhelmed with the fear and grief of students upon the return of the scores. Administrators will be overwhelmed with questions as to where, when and why their son or daughter is taking the exam.

All this for a test.

Our school does not have the room for this to effectively occur while all the freshmen and all the seniors are in the building. Hence, teachers are attempting to create "out of school experiences" for all the freshmen and seniors. Our school's furniture was created for the other 179 days when cooperative group projects, and student exhibitons are our forms of assesment. We have no budget to support these "out of school expereinces", no menu of suggested locations paid for by the lucrative private company known as the College Board. NYC pays the College Board ($1.2 million dollars); the College Board gives schools the exams, and teachers are left to figure the rest out.

Losing the building for a standarized test. The first filter between high school and college. Paid for by Mike and the DOE.

Team Forms to Analyze City Schools

By JENNIFER MEDINA
For years, education experts have dreamed of a group that would gather reams of data on New York City’s public schools, analyzing the numbers to figure out what works, and what does not, in schools.

Now, after years of major changes to the system under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a group of academics has formed the Research Partnership for New York City Schools to do just that kind of analysis.

The partnership includes social scientists from New York University, Columbia University’s Teachers College and the City University of New York, who have already begun researching topics like school financing and high school choice. They will present their reports at an inaugural conference Friday at the CUNY Graduate Center.

“This is something that everyone needs,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of Partnership for New York City, a group of business leaders from throughout the city that supports the effort. Ms. Wylde, who endorsed the Bloomberg administration’s takeover of the schools in 2002, called for such a research group in 2005, after commissioning a “progress report” of the Bloomberg changes.

The group is modeling itself after the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, formed in 1990, when that city’s schools were undergoing their own major changes. The Chicago group has produced dozens of reports in the nearly two decades since, becoming an important and respected source of education research.

The New York partnership has received initial financing from private organizations, including the Gates, Carnegie and Spencer foundations. But many details of its operation are unsettled, like which university will be host to the council and how the council will determine topics to pursue.

The governing board includes Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein; Randi Weingarten, the president of the city teachers’ union; William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University; and Robert L. Hughes, the president of New Visions for Public Schools, which has helped start dozens of small high schools in the city.

As researchers did in Chicago, the New York group plans to collect data across the city to track things like how students perform over time, how long teachers stay in the system and how schools spend their money.

“We want to be an outside agency that is looking at data to see what is really effective,” said Richard Arum, a professor at New York University who has been organizing the group through the Social Science Research Council.

Critics have suggested that the presence of Mr. Klein and Ms. Weingarten on the board would undercut the group’s independence. But John Q. Easton, the executive director of the Chicago group, said that by including officials from the school system, the group would ensure that its findings would be respected.

“Part of what has made us trusted is that we had all the opposing voices together,” Mr. Easton said in a phone interview this week. “If they don’t buy into it, it’s not going to be listened to.”
In Chicago, school officials are notified of each of the research topics before they are published, a practice that will almost certainly be duplicated in New York.

Some of the most useful work, Mr. Easton said, has come out of research on high school student performance, where researchers found that performance in ninth grade was a strong indicator of whether students would drop out. While the conclusion might appear obvious, he said, it sent ripples through the school system.

“You move from speculation to evidence,” said Paul Goren, the vice president of the Spencer Foundation, which has also financed the Chicago program.

Already PEECed

The following reflection was written by J Fernandez a 9th grader here at QHST:

As I entered high school, I feared that the experience would be overwhelming. I believed that everyone would be negatively influenced by drugs, sex, alcohol, and such . I feared that high school would be filled with violence and pessimistic things. My expectation was that, high school would be a true horror story, with no end. On the contrary, my high school experience so far has been a true treasure; something that I will always hold with me.

I'm sure you think I'm crazy because I'm only a freshman at the school, but just looking around the school; seeing the diversity and care we have for each other, really speaks a lot about a school. The school seems very concerned with accepting and helping others, no matter what physical or emotional challenges we face.

The Freshman Montessori Team, organized by Ms. Sadera, , planned an unforgettable and exciting trip for us to the Pocono Environmental Education Center in Pennsylvania. We did all types of exciting and highly anticipated activities. We went through a hike, which I can honestly say no one was energetic about. It was long, but it was interesting to see nature and the many animals that are found in the National Forest. We worked together to overcome obstacles dealing with your balance and hanging onto ropes, which everyone loved.

The whole concept of the trip was for the freshmen to develop a better sense of teamwork, something I admittedly lack in. The experience was amazing. The only negative detail about this trip was the lowly enthusiastic P.E.E.C. guides. They all looked like they'd rather be dead than showing us around. I ignored them and just had some fun meeting new people and working together on the obstacle challenges.

This trip made me realize how different our school is from all the other New York City High Schools. Teamwork is an essential part of our education.Acceptance, generosity, courage, and academic excellence are what the Queens High School of Teaching is all about. The school culture is great. The students are great. The staff is great. That's all that matters. As for our freshman students, we need prepare ourselves for the time of your lives here at QHST!!

.... do learn

CUNY Plans to Raise Its Admissions Standards

From NY TIMES:

By KAREN W. ARENSON

Published: July 28, 2007

The City University of New York is beginning a drive to raise admissions requirements at its senior colleges, its first broad revision since its trustees voted to bar students needing remedial instruction from its bachelor’s degree programs nine years ago.

In 2008, freshmen will have to show math SAT scores 20 to 30 points higher than they do now to enter the university’s top-tier colleges — Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens — and its six other senior colleges.

Students now can also qualify for the bachelor’s degree programs with satisfactory scores on the math Regents examination or on placement tests; required cutoffs for those tests will also be raised.

Open admissions policies at the community colleges will be unaffected.

“We are very serious in taking a group of our institutions and placing them in the top segment of universities and colleges,” said Matthew Goldstein, the university chancellor, who described the plan in an interview. “That is the kind of profile we want for our students.”

Dr. Goldstein said that the English requirements for the senior colleges would be raised as well, but that the math cutoff would be raised first because that was where the students were “so woefully unprepared.”

The chancellor said he had long planned to raise standards further. The new move, which has been discussed with some college presidents but has not been announced publicly, is also a response to some professors’ complaints that too many students are poorly prepared for college work, especially in math.

In the fall of 2005, for example, more than 40 percent of students in introductory math courses — pre-calculus, college algebra and calculus — either failed or dropped out of the classes, numbers typical of many universities nationwide.

Still, some CUNY professors fear that the new requirements will keep low-income and black and Hispanic students from entering bachelor’s degree programs. The same concern was voiced nine years ago, when students needing remedial instruction were barred. Students, faculty and some elected officials also argued then that enrollments would plunge.

Enrollments, in fact, have grown since then. But the proportion of black students at the top five colleges fell to 14 percent of regularly admitted freshmen last year, from 20 percent in 1999, according to the university’s data. (Those figures do not include those admitted through SEEK, a program for economically and educationally disadvantaged students, who do not have to meet the same criteria.) The proportion of Hispanic students has held even.

William Crain, a City College psychology professor who fought the earlier change, said he vehemently opposed the new plan because he feared it would keep low-income and black and Hispanic students from entering bachelor’s degree programs. “This is turning the university into more of a middle-class university,” he said.

Robert Ramos, a Brooklyn College graduate student who is chairman of the University Student Senate and is a trustee, said he was torn.

“I understand the importance of having high standards,” he said. “They help in making your degree much more valuable, especially in this day and age, especially when there is so much competition.”

But, he added, “you also have to look at who CUNY is and who the mission of CUNY is to provide education for.”

Dr. Goldstein acknowledged that “some dislocating effects” were inevitable, but said he expected them to be limited.

Under the new standards, freshmen will have to earn at least 510 on the math SAT to win entry to the five top colleges, and 500 for the bachelor’s degree programs at the other senior colleges — John Jay, Lehman, Medgar Evers, New York City College of Technology, Staten Island and York. The university minimum is now 480, although some colleges have set higher cutoffs.

The university said 266 students at the five top colleges scored between 480 and 510 on the math SAT last year, but might have qualified in other ways.

Currently, students who do not meet the SAT requirement can substitute a score of at least 75 on the Math A Regents exam, which is typically taken in grades 8 to 10, or qualifying scores on ACT’s Compass placement tests in pre-algebra and algebra. The university has not yet set the tougher Regents cutoff because the state is changing its high school math program.

The plan to raise standards took on momentum last winter, after the university’s math council, a group of college professors, asked that the Compass test cutoff scores be raised.

In May, Selma Botman, the university provost, notified college presidents that those cutoff scores would be raised very slightly this fall — to 30 from 27 — and called on the presidents to improve their teaching and develop other courses for weaker students.

Math professors were pleased by the provost’s attention but less happy with her solutions.

Wallace Goldberg, chairman of the math department at Queens College, said at the time that the small increase was like going “from an F minus minus to an F minus.” This week, he said the plan to move still higher on Compass cutoffs in 2008 — a jump to 45 at the top five colleges — was better but still not enough.

Many college presidents said they were eager to raise the requirements. “They are right in thinking the time has come,” said Christoph M. Kimmich, president of Brooklyn College, who was acting chancellor of the university when the earlier policy change was approved.

Some CUNY officials, like Ricardo R. Fernández, president of Lehman College in the Bronx, who were not big supporters of that change, said they had come to embrace it.

“Perhaps I have become more convinced that students are able to rise to the challenge,” Dr. Fernández said.

He added that higher admissions standards would give Lehman added cachet and help it attract some of the 8,000 Bronx students who attend CUNY colleges in Manhattan that have tougher admissions requirements than Lehman does.

Marcia V. Keizs, president of York College in Queens, said higher admissions standards were bringing in better prepared students who had a greater chance of graduating. “Many schools that had described York as not being on their radar screen before have put us on their radar now,” she said.

Edison O. Jackson, president of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, said higher admissions standards had increased the proportion of students in the college’s bachelor’s degree program to about half of his student population, while the college’s associate’s degree track had shrunk.

“Students are coming in and saying, ‘I want to move into the baccalaureate program and into my major much more quickly,’ ” Dr. Jackson said. “And they are.”

Schools Move Toward Following Students’ Yearly Progress on Tests

From July 6th's NYTIMES:

The Cohoes city school district, outside Albany, is considering a gifted program for elementary students and adding college-level courses after discovering that its top students improved less on standardized tests in the past two years than everyone else in the district.

In Ardsley, N.Y., a Westchester County suburb, administrators intend to place more special education students in regular classes after seeing their standardized test scores rise in the last year.

And as the New York City Department of Education begins grading each public school A to F for the first time this fall, more than half the evaluation will be based on how individual students progress on standardized tests.

All three changes resulted from an increasingly popular way of analyzing test scores, called a “growth model” because it tracks the progress of students as they move from grade to grade rather than comparing, say, this year’s fourth graders with last year’s, the traditional approach.

Concerned that the traditional way amounted to an apples-to-oranges comparison, schools in more than two dozen states have turned to growth models. Now a movement is mounting to amend the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which is up for reauthorization this year, to allow such alternative assessments of student progress.

Many urban educators contend that growth models are a fairer measure because they recognize that poor and minority students often start out behind, and thus have more to learn to reach state standards. At the same time, many school officials in affluent suburbs favor growth models because they evaluate students at all levels rather than focusing on lifting those at the bottom, thereby helping to justify instruction costs to parents and school boards at a time of shrinking budgets.

Adding growth models as a way to satisfy federal requirements to demonstrate “adequate yearly progress” could make it easier for some schools to avoid penalties because they would receive credit for students who improve performance but still fall below proficiency levels. It could also increase pressure on high-performing schools that sail above state standards to prove that their students are continuing to advance.

Federal education officials agreed in 2005 to a pilot program allowing up to 10 states to experiment with growth models, but emphasized that they remained responsible for ensuring that all students would reach reading and math standards by 2014, and show consistent gains along the way. Seven states — North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Delaware, Ohio, Florida and Iowa — have joined the pilot so far, federal officials said, and on Tuesday, the Education Department green-lighted Alaska and Arizona to use growth models to analyze data from the 2006-7 school year.

“A growth model is a way for states that are already raising achievement and following the bright-line principles of the law to strengthen accountability,” Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, said in a statement. “We are open to new ideas, but when it comes to accountability, we are not taking our eye off the ball.”

In New York, education officials are developing a statewide growth model that will be in place by the 2008-9 school year, to be used as an additional way to measure student learning. Fifteen New York school districts, mainly in the Albany and Catskill regions, have experimented with growth models on their own through a voluntary program started by two regional support educational agencies in 2005. The districts typically pay these agencies from $1,000 to $6,000 to train administrators and staff, and an additional $2.50 a year for each student for the data analysis, which is partly reimbursed through state aid.

“There is absolutely a need for this kind of data,” said Timothy G. Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, which represents about 700 districts. “It keeps the focus on student achievement, and not on whether you’re going to pave the parking lot or who’s going to get hired as next year’s coach.”

But as growth models become more widespread, some teachers and parents have complained that they are hard to understand and place too much focus on test scores. Teachers’ unions, even while supporting the concept, have protested the use of growth models for performance reviews and merit pay.

“It’s detrimental for education,” said Aimee Bolender, president of the Alliance-AFT, which represents 9,000 teachers and other staff members in the Dallas schools. “It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn’t look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools.”

Ms. Bolender’s union is fighting a decision by the Dallas school district to remove about 30 teachers from five middle and high schools this summer after not enough of their students passed the state tests, and too many failed to show adequate progress on growth models. Ms. Bolender said that many teachers question the reliability of the growth model data, calling it “voodoo math” because “you have to be a Ph.D. in statistics to even comprehend it.”

Even some supporters of growth models have expressed concerns that they could shift attention and resources away from the neediest students. Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, an advocacy group for disadvantaged children, said she was worried about growth models’ focusing too much attention on students at the top. “It risks so broadening the federal government’s involvement that its historical role will be dissipated,” she said.

While growth models have existed for at least two decades, they were not widely used by school systems until recently because few states had the extensive testing data required for the analysis. But under the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires annual testing for students in Grades 3 through 8, states have developed larger databases ripe for the growth-model approach, which many experts see as a more thorough picture.

“When you look at achievement, every single wealthy suburb has high test scores,” noted Theodore Hershberg, a professor of public policy and history at the University of Pennsylvania. “That’s a terrible way to measure the performance of a school or an individual teacher because what you’re really looking at is family background or family income.”

In the high-performing Ardsley schools, where more than 87 percent of the students passed state reading tests this spring, district officials have long mined scores on their own, compiling a thick data book for review and coining the saying: “In God we trust, everybody else bring data.”

But this year, they employed a more sophisticated growth model, which showed, for instance, that seventh-grade special education students had benefited from learning in regular classes. So this fall the district will expand the mainstreaming to the elementary and high schools. “This gives us the ability to measure whether a program has any teeth or is all fluff,” said Richard Maurer, the superintendent.

Cohoes school officials have spent more than $1 million on programs for their most struggling students in the past five years, and wanted to find out how much they had progressed. They learned that the lowest-level students were doing fine, while their high achievers were starting to fall behind.

Charles S. Dedrick, superintendent of the 2,200-student district, said that parents had complained that their children were scoring too low on the Advanced Placement exams to receive college credit, but he thought there was just a problem with the A.P. coursework. Now, after examining over time the state test scores of students in advanced classes, he sees a more systemic problem. So the district has made top-level students a priority, too, and is considering starting a gifted program, expanding A.P. and college-level courses, and adding an International Baccalaureate program to keep them challenged.

“The fact is we serve all students, and not just the lower-end students,” said Mr. Dedrick, who travels across the state to speak about growth models to school superintendents. “If you’re just concentrating on one group of kids, it’s not fair because both sets of parents pay taxes.”

Graduates Search for Jobs!

Early Literacy Assessment

Quiz them-- both orally and on paper
Listen to their retellings
Have them read from the basic sight word list
Select a variety of papers that demonstrate their progress in spelling
Administer and score an attitude survey for each one
Give them the unit pretests and prepare the end-of-level posttests
Prepare a cloze passage for them
See if each one can segment a word into phonemes
Take a running record on all of them
Review their standardized test scores
Make audiotapes of everyone's oral reading for the portfolios
Check with the reading specialist on the progress of caseload kids
Now let's see...seems like there was something else I was supposed to
do by the end of the week. Hmmmmm. What was that?
Oh. Goodness me, I nearly forgot.
Teach.

Steven L. Layne


Thanks for the poem MAYO