[Mpls] Footnote on MSP Testing

[ABerget at aol.com]

In the spirit of "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it",  
some folks might be interested to know that when I  came on the school  board 
in 1992, there was no curriculum department in MPS and then-Supt. Ferrera  was 
just presenting test results from 18 months earlier to the board. In other  
words, the May 1990 results were first presented in the early months of 1992. At 
 that time there was no attempt to link the test results to any instructional 
 planning or remediation. Board members had a mighty struggle on their hands 
to  shorten the reporting time to something meaningful, but with Peter 
Hutchinson's  cooperation we eventually shortened that reporting time to about 6 
weeks. That  made it possible to identify schools and individual students who 
needed help  before another year had passed. 
 
When the state introduced the so-called 8th Grade Tests, MPS was caught  
flat-footed with no remediation plans. During the year that followed, we learned  
some things and made changes, notably: 1) We learned that the 8th Grade Test 
was  statestically correlatable to performance on the 2nd grade CAT. This was  
important because it enabled us to identify by the end of 2nd grade those  
students who would need more help/instruction if they were to be ready to pass  
the 8th Grade Tests six years hence. 2) We also learned that we needed a  
vigorous remediation plan for those who weren't on track. We had already  restored 
the curriculum and instruction department several years before, so with  the 
best of intentions, we put together a very focused summer school program and  
invited/urged low-performing students to attend. As Ross Taylor said, "They  
stayed away in droves." After a couple of years of struggling with that  we 
wanted to know why fewer than 4 out of 10 low-performing students  were 
participating. The responses from families tended to be things like "He's  got more 
important things to do", or "It interferes with our summer plans". The  answers we 
got were not encouraging. 
 
An interesting footnote - maybe I mentioned it before - is the Baltimore  
Public Schools Study, a longitudinal study carried out annually since sometime  
in the 80's, done by Johns Hopkins University that assesses kids twice a year,  
once in September, once at the end of the instructional year. It has found  
consistantly that the "gap" grows during the summer when social/economic  
disparities are not mitigated by the experience of attending school daily, but  it 
does not grow much during the school year for kids who attend school  
regularly. If anyone wants a link to that study, please contact me  offline.
 
Ann Berget
Kingfield