Education Amateurs Harm Public Schools
BESE this week adopted major changes in student, teacher, and school accountability as the Common Core State Standards implementation is being adjusted to a 10 year implementation schedule. Once again, educators and students will have to adjust to major changes in the ground rules.
Superintendent White, in response to concerns of parents and teachers, has proposed to gradually raise performance expectations related to the CCSS. Performance expectations as measured by the PARCC testing will begin in the Spring testing of 2015 and gradually increase to 2025. Acceptable performance on ELA and math will begin with achievement of a 3 out of a 5 point scale on test measures in 2015 and will go up to 4 out of 5 by 2025. New York state began this year by expecting achievement at a level of 4. This resulted in over 70% of tested students rated as unsatisfactory. I guess their leaders thought it was OK to use their entire student population as guinea pigs. White “believes” Louisiana can avoid the severe drop in student performance by using a more gradual approach. This gradual approach is supposed to give a reasonable time for students and teachers to adapt to the new learning standards.
Because of the change to the new testing system, no VAM ratings of teachers will be produced for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years. The student performance part of all teacher ratings will be based on student learning targets (SLTs) for those two years.
Local school officials will be given authority to wave minimum state test score requirements for students to be promoted from 4th to 5th grade and will be allowed to move 8th grade students to the high school level even if they do not pass the 8th grade state
Superintendent White, in response to concerns of parents and teachers, has proposed to gradually raise performance expectations related to the CCSS. Performance expectations as measured by the PARCC testing will begin in the Spring testing of 2015 and gradually increase to 2025. Acceptable performance on ELA and math will begin with achievement of a 3 out of a 5 point scale on test measures in 2015 and will go up to 4 out of 5 by 2025. New York state began this year by expecting achievement at a level of 4. This resulted in over 70% of tested students rated as unsatisfactory. I guess their leaders thought it was OK to use their entire student population as guinea pigs. White “believes” Louisiana can avoid the severe drop in student performance by using a more gradual approach. This gradual approach is supposed to give a reasonable time for students and teachers to adapt to the new learning standards.
Because of the change to the new testing system, no VAM ratings of teachers will be produced for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years. The student performance part of all teacher ratings will be based on student learning targets (SLTs) for those two years.
Local school officials will be given authority to wave minimum state test score requirements for students to be promoted from 4th to 5th grade and will be allowed to move 8th grade students to the high school level even if they do not pass the 8th grade state
