It seems that the education system is having to come up with ever more creative ways to deal with “No Child Left Behind”
“The Texas Projection Measure allows schools to count as passing students who fail the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test as long as a new formula predicts that student will pass in a future year.” (This is how it was reported on a local news website.)
This is how it is stated on the Texas Education Agency web site.
“Growth measures track individual student achievement on state tests from one year to the next, giving schools credit for student improvement over time. The Texas Education Agency developed the TPM as a measure for use in its federal and state accountability systems. Once the TPM becomes available for use in determining state and federal accountability ratings, districts and schools will then have an opportunity to receive credit for students who did not meet passing standards on state tests, but who demonstrate they are projected to pass in a subsequent year.” http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3518
This seems to be eliminating teacher and student accountability. The teacher says “I didn’t teach Johnny what he needed to know, but someone else will help him make up the difference next year, or the next year, or the next. . .” The students are never held to a firm standard of performance.
Reminds me of a class that was offered in college- How to Lie with Statistics
At my sister’s school (she subs at an alternative middle school), the principal held a meeting with the teachers and handed them a list. “X number of students are recieving failing grades. Find a way to pass them.”
Teachers: “It’s not mathmatically possible for them to pass. They were getting grades in the 20s and have only been with us for three weeks.”
Principal: “Find a way. No one fails in my school.”
That’s why I would never make it as a teacher in the public schools. I would walk into the classroom and tell the students that a passing grade is up to them to earn, not up to me to hand out.
You do the homework, you pass the tests, you pass the course. There it is.
You don’t do the homework, you don’t pass the tests, you don’t pass the course. There it is.
The thing no one brings up is a high school diploma is esentially meaningless. Once you get past your first job, no one cares. So if I’m in high school, say grade 10 and I get a job at McDonalds, I drop out. Then I work at McDonalds still. I go to another store or minimum wage job and simply LIE about having a HS diploma. Chances are they won’t check. As you get older and older, it’s very unlikely they’d ever check.
The problem comes when they do get into college (which they do) and the teachers find themselves having to explain stuff that should already be known, from “how to double justify” to “no, you can’t get 100% on a test if you have left half the answers blank.”
I took a light reading through the article, and I intend to read it again.
From what I gathered, the TPM growth measure doesn’t “pass students even if they fail”, which is the conclusion many of you have drawn.
It actually gives schools credit for students who may have failed (for whatever reason). Essentially, it’s a second chance for schools, who might have a decent reason for a high failure rate (i.e. The Crips held a recruitment drive on school property and killed the Vice Principal. We lost a whole bunch of kids to gang-related activities, and the police were too scared to drive them away. Hence, we had a whole lot of failures.)
Uh, relax. the child still fails. This is just a dodge around the Federal accountability rules. It isn’t intended to go easy on the child, it is intended to go easy on the school. Different thing entirely. Unless you think there is a relationship between No Child Left Behind and the education of an individual student.
6th-grade kid fails the assessment. He’s reading at a 2nd grade reading level. That’s bad. Bad for the kid. Bad for the school. Actions are taken to correct this. Maybe the kid has uncorrected eye problems. 7th grade roles around. The kid is reading at a 5th grade level. Is the kid “failing”? Sure. Is the school? It looks like they’re taking appropriate corrective action and the kid is on track to be within an acceptable range next year. No reason why this kid’s low scores should be held against the school.
At least that’s how the quote in the OP looks to me.
Pit FAIL?
That said, there’s plenty pitworthy happening in schools these days and always. This may not be one of them.
Even if you fail, you pass, sure thing. My wife teaches high school English, and on the last day of school at the last faculty meeting, the principal dropped a bomb.
“Every teacher must do anything possible to get every student to pass. No student can fail any class for any reason next year. Figure this out before classes start next Fall. NOBODY will fail next year”.
Sure, little Timmy skipped 2 days a week all year, but if he does a final poster project, then yup, he passes just like the students who were there everyday to be taught and to learn. Same thing, right?
I guess it looks good to the State that everybody is passing…
I teach elementary school in Texas. Ruken has it right - this is not about passing kids who don’t deserve it - it is about assessing and rating schools that have a high percentage of at-risk kids. Usually these kids are second-language learners or low-income students or come from migratory/migrant/homeless families.
I work at one of these schools. These kids start school so far behind it is amazing - some have never heard a word of English and some have never so much as seen a book or had a parent read to them. No, I’m not kidding. They don’t know their alphabet and they don’t have much of a clue about this counting stuff. They move around from state to state or district to district or school to school, and their learning is spotty at best and nonexistent at worst.
The thing is, these kids aren’t stupid and they aren’t failures. Given time and an effective school, they WILL get caught up. It’s just not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time. And that’s what the TPM (Texas Projection Measure) does for schools - it gives them time to get the child up to speed without punishing the school for not getting them up where they needed to be in a single school year. The TPM measures growth - a child is not likely to be considered passing under TPM unless they have shown well over the standard year’s worth of growth - and they also have to be projected to pass the next round of high-stakes state testing.
TPM recognizes that the child who took an the Spanish reading test in 3rd grade, then transitioned to the English reading test in 4th grade and got a 50 percent, but by 5th grade only missed passing it by one question - it recognizes that in 6th grade, that child is probably going to be just fine. It also recognizes that that student has had more than the typical year’s growth every year - some kids are jumping two or more years ahead in a single year’s time…they’re not quite where they need to be, but they’re a lot closer than where they started from.
As a state ranking tool (our schools are ranked unacceptable, acceptable, recognized, or exemplary) it does a lot to level the playing field. A school can be fabulously effective with at-risk kids, and it’s still probably never going to have the test scores that the ultra-rich schools are going to have. The TPM is a way to give credit to those schools that have additional challenges to work with, and is doing a fine job meeting those challenges and teaching those kids who most need effective schools and teachers. And that’s the end of my soapbox. :o
One more thing I might not have made clear. TPM does not impact the student, only the school. I think my school got TPM credit for almost all of our 5th grade reading test failures (all second-language learners). However, all of the students still had to go to summer school and take the state test for the 3rd time in order to determine whether they will be promoted to 6th grade. So, no TPM rescue for them! It did help our school move up a level in the state rankings, however.
This seems like a reasonable adaptive measure to the Federal policies in place now. The wisdom of those policies isn’t particularly relevant as far as the school is concerned: They’re the law and they have to be dealt with in some fashion. It simply isn’t possible for a school to ‘take a stand’ against them and expect to do anything but fail utterly.
The morality of the law influences the morality of people’s actions.
They don’t know their alphabet and they don’t have much of a clue about this counting stuff. They move around from state to state or district to district or school to school, and their learning is spotty at best and nonexistent at worst.