Don’t Get Stuck in the Middle « EdVox

Don’t Get Stuck in the Middle « EdVox

Don’t Get Stuck in the Middle

by edvoxny

By Carol Boyd
A recent EdVox post, Knowing the Score, provided families with a few helpful tips for parent-teacher conferences. This week NYC middle schools will be hosting family conferences and it is essential that families not only know the score but also take affirmative action to avoid having their children stuck in the middle grades.
To realize a whopping savings of less than $3 per student, the Department of Education (DoE) shifted the onus of printing test score results to the individual schools. Regardless of who’s running the Xerox, by now you should have received your child’s test scores in both Math and English Language Arts (ELA). If you don’t have your child’s scores, call the school immediately. If that doesn’t work, then (as has been suggested by the DoE) call 3-1-1!
Test scores should not be the sole indicator of how your child is performing in school, but they do allow parents, students, and teachers to design academic intervention services (AIS) that are prescriptive rather than punitive. Currently, in NYC there are more than 239,000 children left behind by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. Had NYSED involved parents and other school stakeholders in the front end planning of the test score recalibration process, there might be far less need for so much collateral damage and waiver granting.