7,000 Children Left Behind | The Jose Vilson

7,000 Children Left Behind | The Jose Vilson:

7,000 Children Left Behind

by Jose

A couple of weeks back, newspapers across the city reported that around 7,000 students were wrongly sent to summer school because of their ELA or math test scores. I’m almost certain a few of those include my own (former) students.
For those of you who don’t know the inner workings of how these officials make their decisions, the ELA and Math tests have two basic elements: the multiple choice and the extended response. The multiple choice questions are (obviously) given a different weight than the extended response, but, because the test keeps changing on us, it’s hard to determine off-hand whether the student actually passed the whole test based on the multiple choice section.
That’s exactly what the state officials do, much to the chagrin of those of us who have to face the students.
When students get their summer school letters, they’re told on the spot whether the recommendation was based