Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Editorial: Finding a rational middle ground on school performance
Virginia must commit itself to closing achievement gaps in all schools.
From the RoundTable blog
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No one believes that 62 percent of Virginia's schools are failures, but does anyone believe that 96 percent are fully meeting the educational needs of every student?
Parents are asked to believe both irrational statistics. Federal No Child Left Behind rules declare a majority of the commonwealth's schools deficient, while state officials grant accreditation to all but a handful.
The truth lies in between. Virginia education leaders have an opportunity to seize that middle ground where good schools aren't saddled with unfair, demoralizing labels but where real shortcomings aren't masked by a statistical sleight of hand.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan offered states a waiver from NCLB rules, but they must come up with an alternative system that continues to gnaw away at achievement gaps. An initial draft of Virginia's waiver application falls short of finding that middle ground, but there is time for improvement before the state Board of Education takes its final vote next month.
Currently, the state measures a school's overall proficiency, while federal guidelines put equal weight on the academic success of disabled, low-income, black, Hispanic and English-learning students.
The state's waiver application would rely on school-wide pass rates on Standards of Learning tests in most cases, although schools would be required to report their progress, or lack thereof, on closing achievement gaps for poor, minority and other historically neglected students.
The application outlines support services, including assistance from outside experts, and other interventions for about 100 schools with the most serious academic weaknesses. But there is a troubling lack of specificity about what assistance or accountability will exist for the more than 1,700 other schools in the commonwealth. As long as test scores show that 75 percent of its students are proficient in English and 70percent are passing all other subjects, there are too few incentives for a school to target more resources with the students who continue to struggle year after year.
Board member Rob Krupicka suggests that schools be categorized based on their success in improving the academic performance of lower-performing groups. Good, but parents should also demand that those categories be tied to specific consequences.
Krupicka said last week that he wants to "make sure we're not going to in any way dim the very bright light of public scrutiny on schools that haven't reached the full extent of their potential."
His fellow board members should embrace that goal.
