As I sit here posting to this blog, I recognize that tomorrow is the first day of the MSA. In Maryland and Baltimore City, that test is the be-all and end-all of school measurement. I've killed myself all year to help my students get set to be successful, and now there's nothing left for me to do but hope for the best. I think this year I'm even more nervous because I know what the test means, and I also know what it looks like and how my students did last year. If I can't crack the code this year, I just don't know what I'll do.
Urban education is all about results; the kids look so stressed out but in a good way, and even though I tell my students that the test is important to them and it shows how much they have learned, I also knows that it is more about my performance than theirs, or at least that is how I'll be judged. It's also very sad to boil down my experience with them to just one test, since I'm so proud of their daily progress, of their excellent BCRs, of their commitment to improving and to going on to high school.
Regardless, I'm proud of them and me, because it's been a long year and we have worked our tails off. So we'll see on that front.
I wanted to mention two important articles from my NCTE email blast. I love NCTE because they keep me updated on important national trends in education, from the interesting to the controversial. The first link is to an article from Minnesota about bussing inner-city students to suburban schools. It appears that students who went to suburban schools didn't do better on state scores. The problem with the data is that students haven't been adequately tracked for progress. Also, students who chose to bus were probably made to do so by involved or informed parents, which makes it difficult to really understand how student behaviors changed or didn't change because of the bussing. What it does say is that inner-city education isn't working, and systems everywhere are searching for answers, even if it means getting rid of urban education altogether.
http://www.startribune.com/local/16183752.html
The other link is about how Denver is adjusting test scores for minority and low-income students so that they can get into gifted programs. I think this shows just how important true equality is in public education, and it also shows what I have been saying in class--we have programs now that are good, but we have to make them more equitable for students. This doesn't mean that what we have isn't worth fixing, it's that we really need to look at more than just data when deciding on students, teachers, and schools. Quality can often hide behind numbers and irregularities.
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_8442882
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It's evident that one consistent outcome of using standardized tests as a measure of student/teacher success has been the lowering of academic standards. It's simple, really: lower the bar, attain goals. It's worth considering that Minnesota inner-city kids are doing better than its suburban kids because the state has set a low bar for achievement. How dangerous.
"Adjusting test scores for minority and low-income students so that they can get into TAG programs" is fundamentally racist and classist. The title of "Talented and Gifted" means absolutely nothing unless it is backed up with meaningful instruction. Overrepresentation in "Special Ed" classes for minority students is a reality in both IEP settings and TAG settings.
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