[Mpls] Peebles & City Pages (The Grinch who stole recess)

[David Brauer]

Michael Atherton writes:

> Nice and
> student achievement don't always correlate, neither do management
> style and organizational success.  Mr. Goldman's disconnect with
> the overall performance for students at Jefferson illustrates why
> testing is so critical for educational reform, without it we could
> go on for years believing that everything is just fine and dandy.

Mr. Goldman wrote nothing about nice, or "everything" being "fine and
dandy." He wrote

>As a parent of public school 
> children, I haven't seen a lot of evidence of public school employees 
> being obstacles to my children's education.  My experience is pretty 
> limited to Jefferson Community school, but I have been very, very 
> impressed with the teachers, principal, vice principal, and even the 
> much-maligned office staff.

I think Mr. Goldman is being criticized for a statement he didn't make. He
limited his evaluation to his own kids.

It would be wonderful to have No Child Left Behind - but heck, even the feds
are giving schools until 2014 for a 100 percent passing standard! As Michael
writes:

>Test scores aren't everything...

Mr. Goldman's opinion about his own experience, and Michael's opinion about
the (limited) indication that test scores reveal can both be true. Michael's
opposition to Mr. Goldman implies that "the teachers, principal, vice
principal, and even the much-maligned office staff" are to blame for low
performance.

Perhaps. But there are other, deeper questions about Jefferson - what is the
educational level of kids coming in; do students progress at least a year
for every year they are in the school (the district charts this through NALT
tests) - in other words, what's the starting position, not just the scores?
The state report cards are very poor on this count.

It is worth noting that 44 percent of Jefferson's students are limited
English proficient and 12 percent are in special ed. To be fair to Michael
and his genuine concern, Jefferson's Hispanic, black, limited-English
speakers and kids in poverty did not make Adequate Yearly Progress by
state/federal standards, but white kids did. (Again, the feds measure groups
of students, not how much individual kids learn - so the results can be
skewed by recent arrivals to the district and a class of kids who start out
with less ability than the kids in that group the year before.)

Overall, Michael's genuine concern about Jefferson is important to the
overall topic - but not in opposition to what Mr. Goldman wrote, IMHO.

David Brauer
Kingfield