New school report cards reveal ‘sad’ outcomes
The new Oklahoma school report cards reveal sad outcomes in urban schools, something high-stakes standardized testing and the first generation of primitive school grades have always sought to show.
The primary means for enforcing No Child Left Behind’s accountability-driven, market-driven goals involved producing a series of headlines about “failing schools,” with many reformers hoping that patrons would reject traditional public education for a market-driven alternative. Today’s more sophisticated school grades, however, tell a more complicated story. They can be a valuable diagnostic tool if we dare to analyze these new metrics the way they are intended.
The best thing about Oklahoma’s new school grades system is that they document the extent of chronic absenteeism. Previous accountability systems excluded most chronically absent students on their school level report, thus encouraging poor districts to ignore their most vulnerable students.
The two worst things about the report card system are how it is far too difficult to find the most important data on virtual schools, such as Epic charters, and that it uses standardized tests and categories that are too rigorous for accountability purposes. The Epic conundrum is beyond the scope of this post.
Review Oklahoma’s new
school report cards
Oklahoma’s accountability tests are pretty comparable to the NAEP tests that aren’t supposed to indicate whether students are on grade level. Only a handful of places, like Shanghai, Korea and Boston produce high proficiency rates on these sorts of tests. Poor CONTINUE READING: New school report cards reveal 'sad' outcomes