"Out of Sight, Out of Mind" and NCLB
Subtitle: "How soon we forget"
The election is three weeks in the past and we have moved a sufficient cognitive distance away from caring. This enables us to forget about the election returns and move on to issues that are more important.
No, this is not a satire piece about the election. How could it be when Give our Kids Good Schools reports that only 14 states had items affecting schools on their ballots.
Sidebar
The results of these ballot measures were mixed, but the long-term outlook is for teachers to enter the holiday season with less than rosy and bright confidence that education will become a priority in our country.
Here is a summary of what happened:
- Pro Funding Measures for Schools
- 6 ballot measures favored funding
- 8 ballot measures rejected additional funding measures
- Taxes on Tobacco Products to Support Education
- Restrictions on Non-Citizen Access or Restrictions on Affirmative Action
- Gambling to Support Education Funding
Source: GiveKidsGoosSchools.Org E-mail Action Alert:
Subject: How Did Education Fare in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections?
Date: 11-14-2006 10:23:36 A.M. Central Standard Time
From: info@GiveKidsGoodSchools.org
No, this article is about forgetting what leaving no child behind means. In particular, the corollary to "test and complain" about our schools' lack of making "Acceptable Yearly Progress."
The Rest of the Story
A common bureaucratic tactic (politician speak) is to "opaque over" important information with the intention of distracting the people who want to know what is happening.
Sidebar
The words "District" and "Distract" differ by only one letter. I learned this because of the "Freudian-Slip" typo that I just corrected.
The area that school districts are not talking about is related to the rate of school leaving (dropout rate) that school districts and states have been storing in the "let's keep this from coming to light" file for years, files under "disgrace"… The question, "What happens to students who don't pass the state-mandated, high-stakes test during their allotted number of tries?"
Answer: Who Knows, Who Cares?
According to the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News article, In Limbo and Under the Radar (November 5, 2006, Pages 1A & 17A), the state of Texas cannot tell how many students lack a high school diploma because the student failed one or more of the exit exams.
Here are some numbers…
- 25,556 (11% of the state's high school seniors) were in danger of not graduating in 2006
- 6,327 seniors in the class of 2006 completed all graduation requirements except passing all exit exams
- 20,637 students met all graduation requirements except passing one or more of these tests (over the last eight years)
"Of those students, no one know how many many ultimately pass, because after these students leave school, no one keeps track of them.
Source: San Antonio Express-News, 11-5-06, p. - 17A)
Why does this not surprise us in a state that has deliberately undercounted school leavers for decades?
"State Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley declined repeated requests for an interview. Her deputy, Robert Scott, said state education officials would like to know who these students are and what happens to them, but the agency doesn't have a mechanism for following them once they leave school, such as combining the information with state employment data.
'We're attempting to track those kids who have failed the test, and we've run into obstacles with federal privacy laws,' Scott said."
Our comment: the teenage statement of wisdom, "Yea, right!"
Why no Outcry?
School leavers have been an invisible group for years, "invisible by design" to school districts and state departments of education, that is.
Of course, school leavers show up like launched flares on unemployment rolls, Welfare rolls (is there such a thing as a social safety net any more) and the rolls of social service agencies for the poor.
But, we figured out the reason that there is no outcry about the social ills and less-than-equal opportunity that these "ABD - all-but-diploma" students "earn."
Sidebar
The words "earn" and "learn" also differ by only one letter; the same number as the number of tests that it takes to keep a former student and their family in an economically vulnerable state (the state of their finances, not the State they live in) for years.
By the time that former students take the high-stakes exit test for the "Bakers' Dozenth" time , they are 23 years old, and no longer children. (Note: In Texas, students can take the tests four times a year for as long as they can stomach the process and endure the humiliation.)
So, we are not leaving them behind as children, but we are leaving them behind, at the end of the pack of young adults who are scrambling for economic advancement. Adults can fend for themselves…they are not vulnerable like children…the plight of adults doesn't grab us by our "empathy bone."
Scathing Criticism
Here is the low-down on high-stakes tests as graduation requirements…
"Critics of high-stakes exams argue that tests should be used to assess student weaknesses so educators can intervene early. They say that the true role for testing should be to help students, not to serve as a passport to a diploma.
Students who show up and play by the rules play the penalty for lousy teaching or a school environment not conducive to learning, they say. Moreover, poor and minority students concentrated in the lowest-performing schools fare worse on the tests."
(Source: San Antonio Express-News, 11-5-06, p. - 17A)
Other Abuses…
"Linda McNeil, co-director of the Center for Education at Rice University, has reported that some Houston-area educators have counseled students to quit school rather than be counted against the school's test scores
Lame Excuse
"It's amazing that in this society that credit card companies know everything about us, but we don't even know how many students are passing the exit exam…"
(Source: San Antonio Express-News, 11-5-06, p. - 17A)
Final Note
You can reach the author of this newspaper article at:
jeanner@express-news.net
