REFORM: Penalties for high performers

Tom Luna said that “Disruptive change is not easy.” I can agree with that. In fact I am not averse to change, if in the end you end up with a better product. It will be years before we can assess whether our students will be exiting our school systems better prepared to take on the rapidly changing “global economy.”

But in addition to changes in how we teach, we are experiencing a new era of transparency. I have no issue with that either, as long as the data, and the means by which that data is interpreted and shared with the public, is accurate and unbiased and understandable.

Imagine, just as an example, that you are teaching the fourth/fifth grade combo class at Harrison Elementary. You have worked hard to see your students meet the standards set forth by the state. You get your ISAT scores from the previous spring and see that your fourth-grade students achieved the following:

In Reading, four were proficient and five were advanced; in Math, one was basic, four were proficient and four were advanced; in Language, four were proficient and five were advanced.

In the fifth grade, your students achieved the following: In Reading, one was basic, six were proficient, and 10 were advanced; in Math, two were basic, 13 were proficient and three were advanced; in Language, two were basic, nine were proficient and six were advanced.

Wow, the majority of your students are meeting or exceeding state standards, and those few who were basic only missed being proficient by a couple of points. I think you would be pretty ecstatic, considering the vast diversity and varying abilities your students bring to the classroom.

So you start the new year excited to build on the successes from the last two years. The school year begins with a bang, you are excited, the students are excited, and the weather has been outstanding. Then one Monday morning in a staff meeting you learn that Harrison Elementary earned a two-star rating and will need to be put on a state mandated school improvement plan. The scores used in determining the rating came from your previously mentioned test scores last year with the fourth and fifth grade combo class, and from the year preceding when you had them as third-graders.

Furthermore, you find out that this means that you won’t be getting merit pay, which is tied to the rating, and better still, your colleagues won’t be getting merit pay, since the state’s new merit pay system provides merit pay to all, or to none, in a school. Thus, if one group doesn’t meet the “standards,” nobody in the school gets merit pay.

When you ask for an interpretation of how the two-star rating was determined, you basically find out that your advanced students did not show enough growth over the two-year period. This in spite of the fact that 93 percent of the students are performing at or above grade level, and the advanced students, the ones in question, are already scoring at the 10th-grade level while in fourth/fifth grade. Not enough improvement? Not meeting the required standards and growth? Is this fair and accurate reporting or use of the data?

So, I have explained to one of the most committed teachers I have ever had the pleasure to work with, that she should not get discouraged and keep doing a great job, because disruptive change is obviously not that easy…

KEVIN KINCHELOE

Counselor

Kootenai SD 274