My charter’s scores were affected along with everyone else’s. The bottom line – familiar I believe to any educator reading this blog – is that the state tests are only one of a variety of ways to assess how our kids are learning. The change in scores doesn’t change a whit what we think about our kids, their achievements, or their potential. It’s much more important to me how our kids perform on the tasks we set for them in our school and consequently how prepared they are to do well in the next level. And of course we have non-academic goals.

Not to say the state tests aren’t important to me, my board, my authorizer, etc. They are the easiest way for the larger community and world to understand in a snapshot how a school is doing. They are also the entree to future academic acceptance for our graduates, who are often fighting the “I don’t want a kid from THAT neighborhood” from the next schools they want to attend, sometimes explicitly! I think our school’s reputation is helping to turn that around, small as it is, but having high test scores doesn’t/wouldn’t hurt.

So setting goals for achievement on the tests and doing things to prepare kids for them (such as knowing what they cover and having teachers map curriculum to those standards; taking a practice test so the kids understand the format) is important to us as well. We had set what I thought were ambitious goals for the state tests this year and, under the old, inflated standards, we would have met them! So although our numbers appear to be in the toilet, a nice reality check if you ask me that our kids can ALL do better, we have our heads high about the work we all did last year.

To my surprise, SUNY announced in an email to principals this morning that its accountability reports for this past year will acknowledged the raised state standards, but incorporate the 650 cut score as the chief metric. I fully expect that next year, they will ask us to use the new, higher standard as a baseline and set the 75% passing rate as a bar to aim for in 2010-11.

As a charter school, I suppose we have a platform if we wanted to act crazy, create widespread panic and fear, and run roughshod over communities. But we also have the autonomy to do the opposite, and to think carefully and strategically, to take things one at a time and think sensibly about the long-term needs of kids. This crisis/opportunity is no different than any other – it’s a great opportunity to raise standards and at the same time remember that the state tests are only one, incomplete measure of a student’s achievement.

Given the disingenuous character of your critic, I’d say you should be flattered.

P.S. I love Pogue!

 Don’t change a thing!

KS- how has your school been affected by the new scores?
Do you look at testing, or evaluating teachers, or your students learning, any differently?

A ( new,  Leadership Academy) principal I met just after the scores came out was feeling like she did not know her kids anymore, so shaken was the staff by the new  lens that described a very different picture of success/failure than they had believed they were creating in the school.

That 30- 40% drop and corresponding shift in the Bell curve must be mind boggling if you believe the tests gauge learning, and teaching with accuracy and reliability.

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THAT is hitting the nail on the head, Jodama.  Beautiful.

“I need to make what might be an unpopular observation: if teachers were denied tenure based on the faulty scores of years past, it was because their students didn’t even meet the standards that we know now were much, much too low. That tells me that those same teachers’ students would have failed at an even higher rate this time around.”

I believe 1800 students were told that they did NOT have to attend the last weeks of summer school because they were told they “failed” when they actually passed. If their teachers were denied tenure due to test scores, then theoretically they may have deserved tenure.

It’s very convenient that you omitted the fact that millions of dollars in performance bonuses were awarded to teachers, and principals based on the improving scores. Was it an honest lapse of memory, or the realization that “merit pay and bonuses” are part of the “reform” agenda? The policy was only foisted on NYC teachers by DOE pressure, along with Randi Weingarten’s collaboration.

The revelation of the inflated test scores is a COMPLETE LOSER for the “reform” agenda!
It’s proven that the exams were inaccurate assessments for measuring student performance, and teachers’ effectiveness. It doesn’t matter that they were inaccurate to the upside. What matters is that standardized exams administered by one of the largest states in the nation, were INACCURATE! They were inaccurate for a number of years.

Education “reformers” insist that student performance on exams be used to evaluate teachers. Whose to say that in the future standardized assessments could be inaccurate to the downside? Teachers would lose their livelihoods because their evaluations were based on negative, and inaccurate exam results. That’s outrageous!

You’ve been emphasizing your point, in many different forums, and I don’t think that my agreement or disagreement with you strengths your position. I’m simply adding another dimension to the debate.

Right you are, Klein needs to GO
as for your sugestion as a next career move- hey, it worked for Michael Duffy!

B/H T- I will bring your suggestions to our next Council discussion !
I agree the way you phrase it is more inclusive, and I believe in keeping with the spirit/intention w/ which we wrote it.

“…I am comfortable putting my profession-teaching-into the mix.”

That is all well and good. I personally do the same, but we’re not talking about you and me here, and that has nothing to do with the points I made. This scandal is fundamentally not about teachers or students, but rather the political and economic objectives of a small, demographically exclusive group of people manipulating information for their own benefit, and to the detriment of the people they ostensibly represent and work for.

What is your response to that?