In one of his memo’s to local administrators (Dec. 4, 2013 Ed Connect) announcing the transition to PARCC testing, White said that for the
first two transition years, school SPS scores would be graded on a curve. The
new curve grading would guarantee that the relative numbers of schools rated
A,B,C,D, and F would remain the same for the transition years. This means that
school grades, as a whole would not go down, as the tests get tougher. But
it also means that they would not go up. If principals are coerced into
setting goals for constantly raising their school SPS, most will fail
because the scores are being kept artificially stable. But things will only get
worse for principals after the transition, because White has announced that he
plans to “raise the bar” in future years to try to get a much higher percentage
of students performing at the mastery level. The only way a school could get an
A in the future would be for a majority of its students to achieve a rating of
“mastery” on the new PARCC tests. That goal did not work so well with New York
state schools, where 70% of their students are failing to get to mastery. This
problem is aggravated for Louisiana because our students have been performing at
a much lower average than New York state students. But principals shouldn’t
worry since White has proclaimed that Louisiana students are “just as smart and
just as capable as any in America”. Whew, that’s a relief! I suppose John White has some
kind of credentials qualifying him to rate our student’s abilities relative to
all other students in the country.
White is under terrific pressure by his LABI and CABL bosses
to raise student test scores statewide. Many observers were shocked that when
it came to the common core issue that White would buck Governor Jindal, who had engineered his appointment as Superintendent. The answer is simple. His real
bosses are the leaders of LABI, CABL and the big chambers of commerce. And those real bosses love the Common Core.
You see, the whole school reform movement in Louisiana and
most other states is based on an incessant drive to raise standards and at the same time to raise our student test
scores. Nothing else really matters to the big business promoters of school
reform. The big business bosses at the
legislature have chosen to ignore the real causes of low student achievement
because fixing poverty and parent neglect is hard and may cost big business
lots of money.
White is beginning his fourth year in Louisiana, and the
latest ranking of academic performance by Education
Week Magazine’s Quality Counts rating system still rates Louisiana second to last
among all states and the DC system. White is in trouble, so he intends
to put the squeeze on school principals. At the very least he wants to see if he can
get them to fire more teachers. Or they could raise student test scores
by hook or crook like they did in Atlanta and El Paso and DC. Not to worry, . .
. you only go to jail if you get caught.
The pressure is being applied to the members of the Act 240
subcommittee right now to recommend a policy that would require all principals
to set goals of raising test scores and their school's SPS every year. By law,
principals would then be rated on how well they succeed in meeting their goals
of raising school grades. All of this would be in an environment that makes it
almost impossible to succeed.
Jessica Baghian said that principals should not be allowed to get away with
setting non-testing related goals such as improving student discipline for their
school performance goals. Principals may
remember my blog post of Oct. 25, pointing out John White’s dissatisfaction with the high
number of highly effective principals even in schools with low performing
students. If you reread that post you will see his plans for principals.
White is determined that no school with low student
achievement will have good evaluation scores for their principals and teachers.
But he does not intend to denigrate our educators and humiliate our schools, as
standards get tougher. Right!
Posts
